


Equanimity

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), London Spy, SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Anal, Clubbing, Dancing, Deception, Drug Use, Empathy, Gaslighting, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Control, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oral, Rough Sex, Secrets, Trust, twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:30:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 79,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5608648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He did, beyond the job and beyond the greater work at hand. As Danny steps outside to light a cigarette, hands shaking, he supposes now he always will. Alex took a part of Danny into that trunk. Danny carries a part of him now, and not only via the device in his pocket. There is no energy created anew, but only that which has been changed or altered.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Alex altered him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They always do.</i>
</p><p>Danny Holt kills Alex Turner and calls the murder in. But who is involved? Who sought for Alex to be killed? Why did Danny do it? And why is a handsome older man suddenly so interested in him at the pub?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



> This was a trip and a half to write and we had SO MUCH FUN. Written for our brilliant and most loved [Kinneykid](http://kinneykid.tumblr.com/) :D you have a devil's bargain with our muse, lovely one. Never stop. Never ever stop.
> 
> This is our first attempt at a twisty turny murder mystery, with a lot of players involved. We hope you like it!
> 
> One piece of advice: take everything with a grain of salt. You can never trust a spy, can you?

It’s worse than he imagined. It always is, of course, it always is and if it wasn’t then he wouldn’t be human. But this time it strikes him to the bone, the stink in the room and the slick beneath his feet. Danny’s fingers shake as he pockets the drive, and fetches his phone out to dial.

“Hello,” he breathes, to the first click of an answer. “Hello, please, I need help.”

He does. He really fucking does.

“There’s a body…”

Alex’s body, beautiful and honed to anatomical perfection. Alex’s body that Danny loved, intensely, for all too short a time. Alex’s body over which Danny ran his hands and mouth and whispered his immediate and consuming passion.

“Please send someone.”

Anyone. Everyone. Send the police and the detectives. Send the press, just as quickly. Tell everyone what happened here, days and days before.

Danny heaves, choked with bile that tastes like rot that tastes like the love smothered to death inside him that tastes like Alex. He doubles over, a hand on his knees, and gives them the address before hanging up. A sick part of him wants to look again to the trunk that once held neatly arranged hiking guides, writ with Alex’s name in childish script carved into its leather. Danny asks himself - does he want to look because he wants to see Alex’s pretty pale blue eyes again? Or does he want to look to confirm to himself that it’s done, finished, and all he’s got to do now is return the drive and nurse another fucking heartbreak?

He can’t answer his own bloody question, and so he doesn’t look again. The blazing lights and sirens of cars outside lift him upright, but he’s hardly had time to catch his breath before there’s a bang on the door. An aching descent down the little ladder leaves his fingerprints pressed against the wall for them to find.

They’ll know he was here, and they’ll know exactly where.

They’ll not find his fingers pressed to Alex’s firm stomach. They’ll not find his spit warming slick around his cock. They’ll not find Danny’s hair between Alex’s fingers as he gripped him, nor the shining pearlescent gleam of semen dripping glorious down Alex’s firm thighs.

Danny’s back hits the wall as the door swings open, and he drops his phone to be crushed beneath their boots as they sweep the house.

A lot came, which is good. Press will be over this like flies over shit, they always are, and in the midst of all that he can finish the job and call it quits for a month or so before they send him out again.

Always him.

He supposes it has to be him. Too many people claim to read lies like they read the endless posts on their Facebook feed, and sometimes they prove entirely honest in that. Like Alex. Sweet, beautiful Alex. Danny will think about him for years, he supposes. 

The bile threatens to bend him double again and he prepares for the onslaught of guns and torches and screaming voices as he deliberately bumps the door and presses his foot against the creaking floorboard.

“I put the call in, I’m sorry, I’m -”

He’s told to stay still, he’s allowed leave to go to the bathroom with supervision so he can puke, and for the first time since he heard Alex’s pleading in the box slowly ease to panted breaths then nothing at all, he feels like he isn’t sick anymore. It’ll come back. The first time he eats something it will come back, the first time he drinks, smokes, snorts, fucks, it will come back. As will Alex’s taste and smell and the feeling of his skin.

Christ.

He’s forgotten how hard these damn jobs hit him.

_You might be the most innocent person I know._

Danny was, for a time. Alex wasn’t wrong to trust him, and Danny wishes he could tell him. He wishes he’d told him as Alex’s bargaining became begging became a weeping so earnest that Danny is almost sick again. He meant it when he told Alex he liked being around him. He meant it when he told Alex how good he felt, how he was altogether beautiful, how he wanted to stay with him.

He did, beyond the job and beyond the greater work at hand. As Danny steps outside to light a cigarette, hands shaking, he supposes now he always will. Alex took a part of Danny into that trunk. Danny carries a part of him now, and not only via the device in his pocket. There is no energy created anew, but only that which has been changed or altered.

Alex altered him.

They always do.

He gives the police his name and a number where he can be reached. He knows that if he doesn’t appear to make his statement, he’ll be found and far worse things will follow. Danny declines the ride home they offer, breathing smoke out through his nose in hopes it will clear the foul scent from within.

Danny doesn’t sleep that night. Every time he tries to shut his lids he sees brilliant blue eyes and swollen skin sloughing wet from the cheekbones that Danny traced a hundred times with his fingertips and would have gladly traced for a lifetime. He sends his message to the Society. He lays staring at the ceiling.

This is why Danny is good at these sorts of IRL disruptions. His greatest weakness turned into his greatest merit - that he falls in love deeply, quickly, that he believes in love at all and can find it in anyone, even distant men like Alex. His marks believe Danny loves them, because he does.

If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, Danny wonders how much of his own can be removed like this before he’s left with so little that he can’t function anymore.

He goes outside to smoke in his underwear and watches London wake up.

Alex would be getting up to go for a run, now. Always free when he ran, mind turned off from all the numbers and connections, free to simply be for a while. He similarly tuned out when they were together in bed, Danny deep enough in him that Alex would whimper, teeth gritted and eyes barely open, but holding him like he was the most precious thing alive.

God, if only he’d known.

If only Danny had told him.

He flicks the cigarette to the street below and rubs his eyes, as much to wake himself up as to keep the tears at bay. They will come. Unbidden and unexpected during a meeting, outside when a car passed by playing a certain song, smells, sometimes in cafes or sometimes just on the street. Triggers as regular and frightening as the intricacies of his work should bring out in him, though he never responds to those.

Or perhaps he doesn’t respond to them anymore.

He misses him. He’s missed him from the moment the trunk shut, from the moment Alex’s breath quieted, from the moment he left the apartment and walked exactly three streets over and wept until he was sick. He misses seeing him jog along the street beneath. He misses that when he turns back to his bed, it’s empty.

Danny thinks of how Alex’s eyes gentled into little wrinkles in their corners, a smile betrayed though he never let it show otherwise, but the fanned shadows warp and fade, replaced by bloated white rot and Danny chokes back the sound he would make at the sudden rush of regret. It’s alright to feel it. It means there’s still enough of his heart left to matter.

But it can’t stop him from putting his shoes on and brushing his teeth.

It can’t stop him from finding his music player and switching it far, far away from the songs he listened to on his way to see Alex.

Grief can’t stop Danny from going out in the same clothes he wore the night before to make his way to the police. It can’t stop him seeking the truth in all his lies.

No, he doesn’t know what happened. Once he left the trunk and heater behind, and wiped his fingerprints off, he doesn’t know.

No, he doesn’t know who would want to hurt Alex. The Society works in mutual anonymity, and never share their names - they probably think Danny’s a girl.

No, he didn’t do it.

They did.

And in this, his grief is a boon. It spills from raw and gaping wounds that bleed dripping to the floor and it sputters in snot-thick sobs that release everything he’s kept inside since this started. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Alex.

Not Alistair.

He feigns surprise well enough.

He’s freed from the pain of more questions when he finds his breath hitching too fast, his hands shaking too hard. When water doesn’t help, he’s told they will call him again, and nodding numbly, he leaves the station.

He should eat.

He should sleep.

He has enough to take to get himself under, for a good few hours.

Instead, he heads to the nearest pub and buys as many shots as he’s allowed before the barman calls him a cab. Sweet guy. Danny’s known him a good long while. One of the few decent men still left in the city, he’d wager. He takes the cab and dictates an address and only realizes when he gets out and pays that he’s at Alex’s door.

There’s tape at the entrance, signs, a posted guard whom Danny doesn’t bother with fruitless requests. He turns on his heel to stumble home, and by the time he gets there, his body gives in and he collapses into sleep.

\---

They don’t call for several days so Danny follows the usual protocols. He visits the deposit box that was opened under his father’s name. He leaves the item within and takes the key to the lockers at King’s Cross. Locker twelve, always locker twelve. He tosses the key into the nearest bin as he passes it. They’ll have one of their own, they can bloody well take the time to pick the lock if they want the thing so fucking bad.

Hands in his pockets and headphones in his ears, he heads to the pub.

These days are always easiest. He’s got nothing to do but be at the beck and call of the cops. They’ll have him in again and again until they’re adequately satisfied, squinting and nodding at his falsified paperwork, calling numbers that lead to other members of the Society happy to vouch for Danny as being _a nice boy, quiet but always polite_. And all Danny has to do is try to sleep and try to eat, and try not to take too many pills that it makes him miss a call.

These days are always the hardest. He’s got nothing to do but think, alone and lonely, of the things he’s done and the things he’s yet to do. Oh, of course, it’s for the good of society and the Society alike - of course he’s struck a vital blow against the infringements of basic human rights by the government-as-singular-entity. None of that warms the empty space that he reaches for at night. None of that eases the ache in his chest or the ache in his cock when all he wants is the one thing he can’t let himself to have.

A quiet life.

A normal relationship.

Alex, gentle-hearted Alex, who looked at Danny as if he’d never seen anyone so beautiful and incomprehensible.

It does a fat lot of fucking good in these long and dreary days to remember their fight for the lives of others, when Danny suddenly and starkly realizes that he’ll never be allowed to have his own. So he settles to the bar and slips out an earbud, the other still thumping softly through the bones of his skull and filling their hollows with a bass-beat pulse to make up for the lack of his own.

“Gin and tonic,” he says, attempting a smile to the bartender.

“A little early, innit?”

Danny just laughs, shrugs, and gives the man his best impression of an entirely innocent, truly-not-seeking-to-get-trashed young man. The bartender hardly buys it but he doesn’t deny Danny his drink either. He’s seen all sorts. Danny is positive he isn’t the worst.

Drink in hand, he settles over it and lets his eyes go out of focus. Usually he’s given a few weeks before he’s sent out on another raid of any sort, IRL or online. One thing these people all seem to understand is the effect of stress on a human being.

Small bloody favors.

Danny nurses his drink more than he drinks it. Watching the liquid shift and settle, he taps his fingernail against it to make it ripple again.

He should go home.

He should get some rest.

He should take something and knock himself out for a few hours.

He should get in touch with Society again.

He should get in touch with anyone.

He notices the eyes on him without even bothering to lift his own. It’s a warm gaze, interested but not horny, calm enough to look away should Danny simply stand and walk out of the bar now. The man won’t follow. And it is a man. Women’s gazes are much subtler, softer, they feel like a caress whereas a man’s interest… 

That is something else entirely.

Danny ducks his head to set his lips to the edge of the glass, tilting it carefully to take a sip. The man keeps watching. He wonders if he’s been made - if someone actually was outside that night, or heard the ruckus from the flat next door. Maybe he’s from the Society, keeping a watch on Danny during a _vulnerable time lol_. Hell, he could be anyone, and for the first time in a bloody long while, Danny doesn’t give a shit.

He takes his drink in small sips similar to the first, uncaring for how childish and uncomfortable it is. He tips it only when he has to, letting his throat work visibly when he swallows. His eyes close as he sighs. Finally, he sets the glass down and slips his feet to the floor from the high stool he had hoisted himself up onto.

The gaze remains, and it follows Danny like a warm breeze towards the door and out.

And then it’s gone.

\---

Without any need to turn on more lights, the brightness of Danny's screen fills the room with a bluish glow. Cradled on his crossed legs, he types one handed, the other thumbing absently along his cock. It's been enough days now since the piss test that he felt confident and desperate enough to do two rails off the top of his laptop before connecting to the host. Already his pulse begins to swiftly tumble free from the frost that had begun to slow it. Already his blood gathers fat and flushed between his legs.

_JOIN #KaliRiverSoc  
*** Now talking in #KaliRiverSoc  
*** goonch has joined channel #KaliRiverSoc_

_[ xxxxx ] There he is.  
[ goonch ] here I am  
[ xxxxx ] hows it mate  
[ goonch ] I’m fine  
[ goonch ] I’m always fine  
[ xxxxx ] you sound stressed lol  
[ xxxxx ] Pigs giving you shit?  
[ goonch ] nah, no more than usual  
[ goonch ] did you pick it up yet  
[ xxxxx ] Giving it a few days to breathe._

Danny watches the chatter a moment more, the endless stream of endless scheming, before tabbing out to another browser. Woven in and out of relays, a tangled warp and weft provides a digital security blanket, protection from prying eyes, and allows Danny to open Facebook. Just fucking Facebook. Scarcely his own - he'd never have one - but appearing to be his for anyone looking, aged and populated with little details and regular updates.

More to the point, populated with the only picture of Alex he has, taken before Alex could ask him not to and apologized for immediately after.

Danny asked him then if he was shy, unable to believe that someone so good-looking would be photo-avoidant.

He pulls up the picture. Pixelated and unclear, a selfie-mode shot taken in too little light from too near, their cheeks squeeze together, Danny's grin bright and Alex's eyes wide in surprise. He studies the long, straight line of Alex's nose, against which he would so often rub his own, laughing when Alex finally cracked a smile. His lips tasted sweetest then, when he let himself be happy, a permission strangely needed but unquestionably given for him to be less-than-somber for a moment or two.

Danny slips his cock through the slit in his boxers and apologizes to Alex as he touches himself. Fingertips pressing firm to sensitive shaft, foreskin slipping high and low to hide and reveal the head of his cock. Alex would suckle the tip of it, cheeks warming in shy embarrassment when his lips made a sound.

 _I miss you_ , Danny types in a comment to his own picture, _so fucking much._

A moment later, before he can even stroke his cock again, the fake account of another Society member likes his status update.

Cursing, tears burning sharp heat behind his eyes, Danny tabs back to the chat.

_[ xxxxx ] on the news today yeah  
[ goonch ] did they ID?  
[ xxxxx ] him  
[ xxxxx ] not you  
[ goonch ] have they anywhere yet?  
[ xxxxx ] I've only seen it cited as anon terms.  
[ xxxxx ] "The person who discovered him" but no names or ID’ing info.  
[ xxxxx ] so far so good then lol_

“Fuck,” Danny sighs, slapping his laptop closed and sliding it over his lap to the bed beside as he lies back, one arm over his eyes, the other hand gently teasing himself harder. He knows he’ll cry, he always fucking cries once a few days have passed, weeks, months. When the floodgates finally open, he is an inconsolable mess. That’s when the drugs are handy. That’s when the alcohol helps.

Sometimes.

Licking his lip into his mouth, Danny furrows his brows and spreads his legs, imagining that Alex is shifting between them, laughing at his own inexperience with a nervous little trill that hits just above a whisper. He was always so good, so bloody good with his mouth and hands and the heaviness of his body against Danny’s. He thinks of the first time they had tried and he had been so nervous, so tight that even fingers hurt him. He thinks of the hot bath, Alex curled within it, embarrassed by the sweetest thing Danny had ever seen.

His cock throbs hard in his hand and Danny allows himself to stroke faster, turning his wrist, squeezing his balls when his hand slips far enough down. It feels good. It feels good and his entire body responds to it, and the tears flow hot down Danny’s cheeks from beneath his arm.

He misses him. Christ, he _misses_ him. He knows that come another day, come another job, he will feel like that coming heartache is the cruelest he has felt. It’s always the same, and yet it truly isn’t. It’s never been like this. It’s never been this close.

Danny’s breath rattles between his fingers when he presses a hand over his face and he thinks of the trunk. He thinks of the panicked shifting within, like a cat caught in a box, scraping away trying to break free. He presses his fingers harder over his lips, folds one against his nose and strokes faster.

His heart rate leaps, jerking swift and fearful, each tug pulling his breath faster, each stroke shortening it. Once, Danny was blagging a man with the usual pretexting - _presexting_ they call it - and Danny quickly discovered he was into breathplay. Danny engaged him in his preference, belt around his throat and held by the man who damn well - had been smarter - might have decided to keep holding it.

It was terrifying. He swore he wouldn't risk it again.

And then Alex.

_Have you ever tried it? The endorphins are incredible._

"Fuck," Danny sobs against his hand but the word comes out mangled. He squeezes his hand tighter, sides heaving, eyes blurred with tears. Numb toes spread and splay and shove against the sheets as he arches. Fingernails scrabble for a release mechanism, finding none in a trunk so old. Anger becomes fear becomes hurt becomes childish helplessness. Every hitched breath is a weakening sob.

_you seem stressed lol_

Alex's breath against his throat, fingernails in his shoulders where strong arms held him fast. Alex's strong legs shaking against his hips. Alex's body so tight around his own but relaxing, as his kisses smeared adoring, as his words spilled in whispered apologies and laughter. When the dull roar between his ears becomes an instant of silence, Danny drops his hand and gasps to fill his lungs, pushing his orgasm free with a violent shudder. The second breath hardly expands his lungs before it snaps free from him again.

And then he’s crying, childish sobs he can’t control as his body lets go of everything. Pain, fear, pleasure, exhaustion. As he spills between his legs, so do tears leak from the corners of his eyes and Danny can’t stop them. Long after he has shuddered through the last phantoms of pleasure he still sobs against the wet pillow.

It’s his doing. His fault. His work, his life, his choice.

His failure.

His dedication to a corrupt Society.

Slowly, deliberately, he eases his breathing and curls to his side. The pillow smells like Alex, still, just a little, just there, and Danny buries his face in the smell and lets himself collapse into well-earned sleep.

He dreams of the ocean. Blue, blue, blue around him. Pale blue and ink blue, green-blue and navy blue, shifting and waving and slipping into and out of each other. And then the waves become eyes and those eyes narrow in pleasure and Danny wakes crying but he can breathe again. He stumbles to the shower to wash himself clean and lights up as soon as he leaves the bathroom, settling naked on the bed and pulling his laptop closer to open it again.

Nothing new.

Just chatter.

_you seem stressed lol_

_I’m fine_

Danny ashes the cigarette into three-day-old coffee on his bedside table and opens up a new browser.

_I’m always fine_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Christ, he’s is a fucking disaster right now. It’s bad. Really bad. Maybe he should just pull an Irish exit and retreat to the safety of IRC and furious masturbation. That’s the sane response to this, right? Avoidance to affect a semblance of control when one feels an acute lack thereof. A therapist told him that once, long ago, before he stopped seeing her because his paranoia grew so profound that he developed agoraphobia from it._
> 
> _He squeezes James’ hand a moment more - too long, by the societal standards of How Manly Men Do Things - and when he lets go it’s all he can do to muffle his own internal strife with another swig of beer._
> 
> _Par for the bloody course._

The SMS is simple, from a number Danny doesn't know and doesn't save:

_Got it. Thanks for the key._

It nearly gives him a laugh, anyway, and he sends back a dutiful _lol_ before pocketing his phone. Mostly, stood on the bridge where they met, Danny revels in relief that feels as cool and grey as river over which he looks. Smoke plumes thick from his lips, and he recalls that Alex never liked his smoking, but withstood it.

Maybe if they'd had a real shot, Danny would have quit for him. Taken up running instead, going for jogs before brunch. Alex might have taught him that. Danny perhaps could have taught him many more things about his body than they had time to share.

Maybe, might have, perhaps, could have.

They never had a chance, when the foundations of their meeting were laid on falsehoods, the structures that upheld their temporary residence built on half-truths. What wasn’t a lie was that Danny loved him. That’s what Alex looked for, and he found nothing wanting, clever eyes seeking between Danny’s own to discern his honesty.

He was right be paranoid.

He was just as right to believe.

Danny loved him. He loved Danny. And that’s what made it all so horrifyingly simple.

Sloughing his coat up higher, scarf just beneath his mouth and gathering the condensation of his breath, Danny presses the cigarette to his lips again. Alex's work was destined for the wrong hands, his own organization or one of the others involved, and the last thing the world needs is that kind of power in the hands of a government - any fucking government. Already they watch their citizens from every camera on every corner. Already they track all but the most hidden movements on phone and internet alike. Privacy is a joke. Independence is increasingly a lie.

So where better for such a remarkable life's remarkable work to fall but into their hands? The hands of the oppressed, crushed beneath the boot of a dawning dystopia. The people, whose fundamental human right is to live and breathe freely.

Society, in every sense of the word.

It’s been three weeks, and Danny can nearly convince himself he’s okay.

The police haven’t called him in again, but he’s fairly sure they’re following up on where he goes. He’s used to being followed, by the government, by Society. As much as they fight against the frighteningly Orwellian culture, they run enough tracers on each other to warrant genuine paranoia.

Little Brother, so to speak.

He supposes it makes sense. It doesn’t make it any more pleasant.

Danny doesn’t want to know what they will do with the system Alex invented. He can guess well enough. He saw it, just once, when he woke Alex’s computer up, when Alex was taking a shower after gathering the courage to invite Danny over. He saw it just once, and that was enough, even with the quick calculations and the eidetic memory he could see immediately the power of the work, the importance of it.

Perhaps it was that moment that made him fall so hard for Alex, a want as much to protect as to discover.

He doesn’t ask why they couldn’t have just recruited Alex. He knows enough to understand the reasoning but it hardly hurts less. He would have been an asset to the Society. He would have elevated them to a level of their own. Just where they are, now, but without the death, without the heartache.

But Danny supposes he can’t ask for that. It would be selfish. And no one is anyone in the Society - they’re everyone.

And they’re no one.

Nowhere and everywhere.

Now and then someone gets picked up off an exit node and the government trumpets its victory. They’ve yet to realize that anonymity means just that, to the Society as much as the outside world. All their questioning comes to nothing. There are no names to give. So Big Brother trumps up some charges about _cyber crime_ or whatever hilarious new scare-quote they’ve come up with that day, smearing it across the paper to make themselves look like the good guys. _Internet terrorists_ they call the Society. _Digital vigilantes_. And the threats implicit are met with laughter, and maybe a good hard doxxing.

Cut a member of Society down, and others take their place.

Names don’t matter. Places, faces, faiths, sex, age, ethnicity. So long as you help, you’re as much a part of the Society as anyone else. There are no hierarchies, no gods or masters. Destruction of secrecy, dispersal of information, dethroning the arbiters of freedom, _lulz_ are what guides them, nothing more and nothing less. Danny can count on one hand those who know any truth of who he is, and they only do because of his willingness to disrupt IRL. That requires special protocols, but even these parties are isolated from the whole. They know each other. No one else knows them, and they know no one but the Society.

Danny uses the remains of his cigarette to light another.

He imagines they’ll disperse the information first, far and wide, well beyond the reign of any standard operating government. Then they’ll learn how to use it. And then, like a mirror, they'll turn it on the watchers themselves.

 _The end of lies_.

Alex never realized what a romantic he was.

He claimed no affiliation with soulmates or fate. He claimed only to go by facts and figures and nothing else. But everything he did, with his numbers and his silence and his lack of ‘right’ words screamed volumes. Danny cannot think of a more loving human being than the shy and awkward mathematician with whom he fell in love.

Fuck.

He shivers and scuffs his shoes along the pavement as he walks, eyes down and smoke obscuring his vision once in a while. He doesn’t take the cigarette out of his mouth to exhale - he lets it hang from his lips and ash itself when they tremble too much. His hands he keeps in his pockets.

Off the bridge and past the pub and he feels that gaze again. Still just as warm, just as curious, and it slows his steps enough to warrant suspicion. Danny covers it by reaching for his phone as though to check a message. He stops, long enough to unlock it, long enough to pretend to type something out, just to bask in the man’s gaze a moment more.

He doesn’t turn his head to find him, he doesn’t seek for him, but he is here, again, at this same pub. Danny wishes it wasn’t ingrained in him to be paranoid, but hell if he remembers what he did with all his time when he wasn’t. He sets his phone away and picks up his pace again, finally bringing a hand to take the cigarette from his lips and exhale a plume of smoke up towards the grey sky.

Perhaps he will be here again, this evening. Or the evening after.

Perhaps he frequents the pub and needs the drinks as often as Danny does.

Or perhaps Danny’s been made.

Strangely, much as he had cared little weeks before, he cares even less now. That warmth is tempting, that warmth is missed. There’s some peace in the idea of being clocked; even if he’s imprisoned, questioned, deposited away forever in some black site detention facility, the work goes on without him. The wounds scratched against Society heal themselves. He will not be missed.

There’s peace in that, too.

What's the worst that could happen, besides all that shit he just ran down like the world's worst list of chores? If he's already made, then avoiding it isn't going to change anything. If he hasn't been, then it's another sort of interest entirely.

God knows Danny wouldn't mind the bloody company right now.

Danny is startled by the sudden pull of strange muscles, and realizes he's smiling. The surprise of it even makes him laugh a little.

_irl lol_

That's a fucking rare thing these days.

Danny slips his cigarette into the ashtray outside the bar as he opens the door, running a hand through his hair, fingerless gloves throwing static like lightening strikes among the puffy clouds of his curls. Not the bartender, though he gives Danny a nod. Not the couple of lads telling a ref on the screen to _piss off_. The man at the window - 

Of course.

His head is down to his own phone now, and he looks just as interested in it as Danny had been in his, passing by and pretending to be immersed. He’s older, laugh lines against the corners of his eyes, frown lines against the corners of his mouth. He’s lived a life not bathed in luxury, and that’s always been a strange turn-on for Danny. Struggle and misery love company, after all.

He looks up, briefly, as Danny lets the door close behind himself, and send him a smile. Not even a smile, a narrowing of pale blue eyes that suggests amusement and pleasure, that suggests warmth and exhaustion. He has blonde hair, greying in the strands close to his temples. His hairline isn’t receding. His eyes are a little droopy, as if he’d just awoken.

He’s not conventionally handsome but _Christ_.

The man looks to his phone again and shifts, just enough to open his body language to approach.

It's only when two steps bring him nearer - and all the while Danny wonders, how _do_ normal people normally walk? - that he remembers that he is absolute shit at talking to people. Especially handsome people. Especially handsome older men who lift their brow in an expectation of conversation and Danny nearly chokes on his tongue.

Another facet of his faulty qualities that renders him entirely believable for disruption. It's hard to fake awkward. And what kind of organization would send someone like this to catfish, instead of someone sly and smooth and charming?

A fucking clever one, that's who.

"Afternoon," Danny says. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

The older man shakes his head, eyes narrow a little more in his curious amusement. "I suppose that depends."

"Depends?" Danny blinks, and then laughs, a little startled by the sound of it. "Oh, I'm not selling anything or - I don't know, panhandling? I just saw you and..."

"And?"

"You looked like someone I want to talk to," says Danny, cheeks aching already from another soft smile. "Stupid, really. You probably want to drink alone, this time of day. Not saying you're an alcoholic, just - it's an unusual time of day and," he stops, and sighs, shaking his head. "Sorry. I think I read this wrong."

Another of those mysterious and soft smiles that make Danny think of cats settling in a patch of sun and letting their eyes slowly close. If a human being can feel _comfortable_ , this man feels comfortable. He allows a moment more of silent watching before he laughs too, breathy and quiet, and sets his phone away.

“You didn’t,” he assures him, bending a little to push out another chair for Danny to take if he wants. “I was only sitting here and wondering what I could possibly say to have you come over. I’m terrible at this.”

It should be a warning sign, immediately, playing into Danny’s own awkwardness with his own, but Danny has fucked enough people to know that physical appearances only say so much. He is well-dressed in a casual suit, and he is a man who holds himself with confidence in everyday life - just not in this. Not with other men. Not with other men in a bar not designed for that sort of interaction; this is just a pub, on the corner of two busy streets. Perhaps he lives nearby, like Danny does. Perhaps he comes here because he has memories attached to the place and he holds them dear.

It should be suspicious, but it isn’t.

Society has taught him enough that Danny knows when to allow his paranoia to ebb, if only for a little while. There is a comfort in knowing his actions will be followed regardless. He’s nothing to hide.

The man smiles when Danny sits down, unwinding his scarf to hang over his shoulders, loose.

“You’ve come in a few times before,” the man offers, taking up his beer to sip and gesturing with it after to gauge if Danny would like one bought for him as well.

Danny nods, smiling a little more, then a little less, then a little more again. The man returns his expression with bemusement before turning to the bartender, who lifts a hand in awareness of the incoming request.

“More than a few times,” Danny says, lifting his shoulder in a shrug. “Regularly. Too regularly, probably, but it’s nice here. Not fancy enough to draw in tourists, not dismal enough that I hate myself for coming in so often. You’ve been here before, too,” he says, not a question.

He’s pleased when the man inclines his head.

“Not as often as you, from the sound of it, but often enough to have seen you here.”

“And?”

The man’s tongue appears pink past his lips before he sighs a singular and exceptional note of laughter. “And?”

“What did you think?” Danny asks, before abruptly shaking his head, rosewood-dark curls scattering across his brow. “I’m not fishing,” he says. “Honestly, I’m not. But you noticed. Most people don’t. Why?”

The man considers him, really considers, and Danny feels the heat of that gaze on him again and allows himself to relish in it. He almost wants to close his eyes and breathe it in, let someone look at him for a change, allow himself to be looked at for the first time in weeks. He craves it. He’s not a man who can remain alone - his heart withers.

Instead he just blinks, and the man before him licks his lips again.

“I’m afraid you’ll find the answer detestable,” he says after a moment, and they both laugh. “The first time I saw you, you looked so sad that I couldn’t look away.”

“You’re a rescuer,” Danny guesses, lifting his eyes when the beer is set before him, before returning them to the man who bought it for him. Danny watches as he shakes his head.

“A kindred spirit perhaps,” he offers instead.

“Sad, you mean.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have your answer.”

Danny licks his bottom lip between his teeth and releases it slowly, replacing it with the cool, hard rim of the beer bottle. It chills his lips but warms his cheeks, plunking softly back down the brown glass as he lowers it to hold between both hands and his knees.

“Why?”

They ask it at the same time, with the same shared breath, and both laugh, ducking their heads. Neither answer. It was a bold move met and blocked, _check_ without the _mate_ to follow. Danny is glad to retreat from the advance, and regard the man from a safer position. Something simple. Something far less desperate than the goddamn overwhelming urge to ask this man to stroke his hair, or hold his hand, or kiss his cheek, or give him some kind of contact to breathe life into his faltering form once more.

“What’s your name?” Danny asks, smile widening.

“James,” he answers, taking up his glass again, bringing it to his lips only as Danny brings his bottle up. Another moment shared, another laugh pushed through the thorny lump that has been growing in Danny’s chest for weeks. He allows the relief to flood him as breath by breath James makes it go away with nothing more than a smile and a narrowing of his incredible eyes.

“Danny,” he offers back. James tilts his head, and Danny notices that there is just a little, just fucking enough foam at the corner of his lip to be entirely too bloody distracting.

“Would shaking your hand be too formal?” James asks, brows up, before his smile warms his face again and he ducks his head in embarrassment.

You can’t fake awkwardness.

You can’t fake inexperience.

Danny sits a little taller and offers his hand. Then, muttering an apology, he retracts it and wipes the condensation from his beer off on his black jeans, before offering it again. When James takes it, Danny could moan at the sensation. Sudden heat and sudden pressure. Callouses at the base of his fingers, rough but not at all unpleasant. Danny imagines how that firm, stable, work-hardened touch would feel against his scalp, his throat, over stiffened nipples and around his cock.

Christ, he’s is a fucking disaster right now. It’s bad. Really bad. Maybe he should just pull an Irish exit and retreat to the safety of IRC and furious masturbation. That’s the sane response to this, right? Avoidance to affect a semblance of control when one feels an acute lack thereof. A therapist told him that once, long ago, before he stopped seeing her because his paranoia grew so profound that he developed agoraphobia from it.

He squeezes James’ hand a moment more - too long, by the societal standards of How Manly Men Do Things - and when he lets go it’s all he can do to muffle his own internal strife with another swig of beer.

Par for the bloody course.

James brings his hands to his lips, perhaps entirely unconsciously, and draws the side of his thumb over and over the bottom one, before laughing.

“I’m shit at small talk,” he admits. “Bloody terrible at it. I’m sitting here wondering what the hell I can ask you that isn’t to do with the weather, your work, or religion.”

“Always safe to avoid religion,” Danny agrees and James laughs.

“And the rest?”

Danny bites his bottom lip again before releasing it with a grin. “Finally stopped raining, at least.”

James’ eyes narrow, as he looks out the window to the street and river beyond. Danny follows his gaze, further still, to the city enshrouded in a late afternoon haze, London’s spires both new and old piercing skyward and glinting in the sun.

“Computers,” Danny adds, enough of truth in his statement to make it so. “You?”

“Security,” responds James, and Danny tilts his head a little. The response - no, the tone of the response, the color of it is familiar to him as his own. There is more there, as there was more to their shared attraction by way of ennui.

He doesn’t pry into this, either.

“Is this going well?” Danny asks after a moment, and each a sip of their drink. He leans a little closer, in truth aching to breathe in the warm scent of musky masculinity and bergamot, faded smoke and sweat. He speaks as if they’re conspirators to their own conversation, sharing a privacy one step further than the superficial question at hand.

James purses his lips and sets his elbow to the table, resting his chin against his hand. It brings him closer to Danny, and when he shifts his legs, uncrossing them and setting one to the ground, the other against the edge of the stool, Danny wonders how he’s managed not to yet crawl into the man’s lap.

“I think,” James says quietly, enough that his tone purrs to a lower timbre, whether by intention or not. “That I am making a right fool of myself in front of a very handsome young man.”

Danny dips his head and turns his gaze towards the window, smile hidden but there, whether he likes it or not. It’s a coy gesture, genuine but practiced, all at once. Does he mean the things he does? Has he simply found a calling that corresponds with his particular innate skill set and desires? Or has he rewritten his own internal code line by line to better match the kind of person he wants to be?

Who fucking knows.

Who fucking cares.

“You’re flattering him,” Danny says, trying to restrain his pleasure but completely unable, as his firewalls fall away and his buffers crumble. “Not falsely, but in a way that makes his heart beat a little more quickly than he’s comfortable.”

“I can stop,” James says, and Danny shakes his head.

“I think that I must seem very young, to an older man who knows both work and finery,” Danny says. “And I wish I had more to say to make me seem mature and thoughtful, when all I can think instead is how desperately I wish we’d shake hands again, if only that, and I know that to ask him that would be an absolute bloody embarrassment.”

James blinks, eyes widening a moment before he lets his lids lower again, that same sleepy expression of pleasure that had greeted Danny upon entering the pub. He turns his head against his own palm then sits straighter again. He reaches for his beer and finishes it, tilting his head back and Danny is certain, _certain_ it’s deliberate. When he sets it down again, James slips from his stool and stands before Danny.

Then he holds out his hand.

“It was a pleasure,” James tells him. “Sharing a drink and company, allowing me to lay upon you my childish fears regarding the striking young man before me.”

Danny swallows, heart in his throat. How had he fucked up? What had he said? Was it too forward? It was too fucking forward, Christ, he should know better. He’s a bloody mess. He takes James’ hand regardless, relishing perhaps the last touch he’ll get from him as he forces a smile and shakes it.

“Likewise,” he says, “regarding a man a little out of my league.”

James laughs again, that breathless thing, and ducks his head before reaching into his pocket for something.

“I had hoped,” he says, “to convince the young man to come to dinner with me tomorrow evening. Would you pass on my card, if you think he’ll be interested?”

Danny takes the card, turning it over in his hands. He slips his fingertips across it in a habitual and subtle touch to ensure there’s no RFID tag embedded within. James’ name - Sheffield his surname - ripples beneath his thumb and the number beneath sends a spray of goosebumps prickling Danny’s arms beneath their hoodie sleeves.

Just a business card. Just a name.

And in that desperate moment, everything - everything and more - that he could have wanted.

“I’ll pass it along,” Danny says, with a wry smile as he tucks it into his pocket.

“Only if he’s interested,” James repeats, the blue of his eyes nearly disappeared in their amused narrowing. Danny laughs, again, and lifts his beer.

“I’ve got no reason to think him anything else.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Meet at a pub. Hit it off. Flirt a little. Go out to dinner. Make small talk that becomes - ideally - less fraught with hope and anticipation as it goes, aided by the lubrication of a few drinks, that lead to an invitation to have a nightcap._
> 
> _Clumsy kisses. Roaming hands. Shagging, with hopefully a minimum of regret afterward._
> 
> _It’s what normal people do and Danny still can’t shake the sensation of this being scripted for him._

_/JOIN #KaliRiverSoc  
*** Now talking in #KaliRiverSoc  
*** goonch has joined channel #KaliRiverSoc_

_[ xxxxx ] Outfuckingstanding.  
[ goonch ] was it encrypted?  
[ xxxxx ] Only a moment's work.  
[ xxxxx ] took him four fucking hours lol  
[ goonch ] should have left it in the locker  
[ xxxxx ] Piss off.  
[ xxxxx ] Pigs called you in again?  
[ goonch ] not yet. Doing it all official. They need a scapegoat to hang  
[ goonch ] they'll call  
[ xxxxx ] Keeping your name out of the papers.  
[ xxxxx ] they don’t know what the fuck to do with you lol  
[ goonch] got better shit to do anyway_

It takes Danny three cigarettes, one line and half a bottle of beer to call, and only two rings for James to answer.

“That was quick.”

“Had my phone handy.”

“Waiting for me to call?”

“Work.”

Danny swallows, glad James can't see him mentally kicking himself for the terrible attempt at flirting.

“And trying to convince myself I haven't been waiting for you to call,” James adds with a laugh.

Danny listens as the sound shifts, the phone cradled against James’ shoulder, as if it’s Danny’s cheek resting there instead. Tieing up the laces on his Oxfords, perhaps. Smoothing his shirt into his pants. Looking into the mirror to fix his tie -

No.

No no no. Not those soft, long fingers against his shoulders, not that familiar curious warmth breathed behind his ear. Not their reflections, handsome together, complementary in their differences.

That was work, he tells himself. That was work, he tries to make himself believe. This isn’t work, this is normal. Healthy. Meeting a nice man for dinner and -

“Did I lose you with that one?” James asks, and Danny draws a sudden breath, his own trunk cracking open.

“No,” he says with a smile. “No, I was momentarily stunned with disbelief. Can I tell you something?”

“Please.”

“I didn’t expect you to answer,” Danny says, forcing his breath slower, though his pulse drums faster now for different reasons. “And I’m waiting for you to be too busy for plans tonight, so we’ll reschedule for some vague future time that will never come, and -”

“Eight o’clock at Bibendum.”

Danny blinks, and hurtles himself forward from his lazy sprawl. He shoves his screen back and tabs out of the IRC to look up the restaurant. Pound signs everywhere and enormous numbers beside, an absurdly charming and charmingly absurd building that used to be a tire factory, a Michelin bloody star which seems distressingly appropriate and yet wrong for him, personally and entirely.

He can’t afford this. He can’t dress for this. He clicks the reservations and finds them full, shaking his head. “How did you…”

“I have my ways.”

His tone runs calloused fingers hot down Danny’s spine, straightening him with a shiver. “More than a little,” Danny murmurs to himself.

“What is?”

Swallowing down a whine of dismay, Danny spreads his fingers over the bridge of his nose, blushing hot. “Out of my league,” he finishes. “You are. Completely.”

There is a pause and Danny can feel, even on the exhale he hears alone, that James is smiling. For a moment both hang in their own silence before it breaks like a wave over rocks. James laughs softly.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Please.” Danny bites his lip.

“I fretted so long over a place to go, wondering what would seem ridiculous and what not fancy enough. Does it help that I am entirely lost in trying to impress you?”

This time, Danny can’t withhold the sound laughed helpless past his lips, but at least it’s a noise of delight rather than dismay. He shoves the computer away again and tilts to his side, curling small on his bed, phone pressed close to his ear. Like a bloody schoolgirl giggling over a crush. Has he always been this pathetic?

“Yes,” Danny answers, himself and James both. “It does help.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying my struggle,” responds James, amused.

Neatly trimmed fingernails gouging furrows in old leather. Cupid’s bow lips pressed to an air-tight seal.

“It isn’t that,” Danny says, shoving his palm so hard against his eye he sees stars, he sees darkness, he sees a sea of pale blue.

Shit.

_$ cd relationships  
$ cd current  
$ ls  
alex.txt james.txt  
$ diff alex.txt james.txt  
$ mv alex.txt past  
$ more james.txt_

Work-rough hands stroking down his back. Sleepy eyes narrowing with want and a smile curving cheeks stubbled with greying scruff.

“I only meant,” he says then, before James can respond. “I only meant that you’ve already impressed me. Or interested me, anyway, more than enough. You needn’t struggle but it’s - it’s sweet that you are. That you care. That’s all I meant.”

“It’s been a while,” James muses after a moment. “Since I’ve had anyone I’ve wanted to impress.”

Widower, Danny thinks. He no longer wears a ring but perhaps it was a long time ago. Perhaps that's why that lingering strangeness of experience contrasts its counterpart when Danny watches him, listens to him.

He knows how to impress a man, he knows how to touch a man - Danny has to resist squirming a hand between his legs just at the thought - but it has been circumstance and time and woes of a much more intimate nature that have kept him from allowing that knowledge to be shared with many people.

“Shall I pick you up this evening?”

“In a limousine?” Danny asks, laughing, and James laughs in reply.

“In my Aston Martin actually, but I can always make other arrangements.”

“Fucking hell,” laughs Danny against his hand. “Excuse my French.”

“I don’t believe that was French, but I’ll excuse it all the same.”

“Very kind of you,” he snorts, before stretching to type in a clumsy _gtg_ to the IRC and closing his computer. He’ll need to find a jacket. A suit would be better, but fuck if he’s got one or enough time - or money - to make that happen. He’ll need shoes.

More cigarettes.

Mints to make up for the cigarettes.

Condoms.

This time, Danny doesn’t stop himself from sliding his hand between his legs, hips twisting to rub his cock against his wrist.

“Well,” he sighs, “if the Bentley and the Rolls are in the shop, I suppose the Aston Martin will have to do.”

“Much obliged,” James replies, and Danny closes his eyes to imagine that warm voice pressed to his skin, to imagine dirty things whispered against him. He’s sure that beneath the put-together appearance, the fancy suits and combed hair, the man is filthy.

So many are. 

It is embarrassing how hard he gets - and how quickly - just thinking about it.

“I’m a block out from the bar,” Danny tells him quietly, dictating his address to the man on the other end of the line as he continues to rub himself through his trousers, eyes at half mast. “Should I bring anything?”

James considers with a low hum, and shifts his phone against his ear again.

“Something presumptuous,” he suggests.

“Already bringing myself along for that,” Danny grins, cheeks hot. The words resonate, their meaning echoes. His cock swells thick and he pushes his thumb along his shaft and down to his balls to feel them tighten. Dampness spreads hot where the tip of his cock is caught between hip and wrist, soaking into his boxers.

“Then there’s little else for which I could want.”

Danny barely manages to choke back a noise of bloody rapturous delight. “Are you always like this?”

James is quiet for a moment, and Danny bites his lip, grinning at the man’s audible surprise.

“I’m afraid so,” he decides.

“Good. See you soon, then.”

James laughs before quietly clicking the call to silence and Danny allows himself to moan, turning into the pillow to bite it as he continues to rut against his hand.

He can’t remember the last time he didn't fuck for work and the thought makes him laugh. A whore for the greater good.

\--- 

James is dressed in a suit that fits him like a second skin and Danny blatantly stares for a good few moments before ducking his head with a grin. The car is silver, polished as though it just came off the production line.

He is so charming, goddamn him.

“Evening,” James purrs, leaning over the roof and smiling, hands clasped together. “You look…” He bites his lip, just the inside. Just enough. “Lovely.”

Danny smiles a little, and then a little more. His nose wrinkles and he shakes his head, casting a dismayed look down at himself and noting stark discord between what he sees and what James alleges. He’s managed to find a jacket, at least, one that sits snug around his waist. A collared shirt beneath, not even a proper button-down, just a bloody blue polo and proper trousers instead of jeans. Boots have taken the place of sneakers but he’s managed to at least scrub them to a point where - so long as no one looks too closely - they might pass.

He can feel his hair standing up again, unruly the moment air touches it, no matter how long he cursed at himself in the mirror trying to comb it into order.

He’s a disaster.

But James thinks he’s a lovely one, and Danny’s cheeks warm.

“Thanks,” he manages, tactfully swallowing down the bevvy of awkward apologies he wants to make for his clothes, his manner, his awkwardness and existence as a whole. He lifts his eyes again as he comes closer, far more focused on James than his car, beautiful though it is.

“You’re stunning,” Danny whispers, laughing against his hand. “Christ.”

James’ eyes narrow and his smile pulls all the lines on his face deep and beautiful. He unfolds his fingers to draw over his lips and steps back from the car, coming around to open the passenger door for Danny to get in.

“Charmer,” Danny whispers. 

“Flirt,” James replies, smiling warmly as he closes the door again and returns to his side. “Shall we?”

“ _Oh_ ,” laughs Danny, as the auto rumbles purring to life. “Yes.”

Despite the extraordinary vehicle, the equally exceptional man driving it in his equally enticing suit, it feels so wonderfully ordinary that Danny has to tuck his fingers against his lips not to laugh. He concentrates on the pace of his breath against his knuckles, watching not the city through the window, but James’ reflection in it. This is how people do this, isn’t it? Normal people, real people with real names and histories and lives.

Meet at a pub. Hit it off. Flirt a little. Go out to dinner. Make small talk that becomes - ideally - less fraught with hope and anticipation as it goes, aided by the lubrication of a few drinks, that lead to an invitation to have a nightcap.

Clumsy kisses. Roaming hands. Shagging, with hopefully a minimum of regret afterward.

It’s what normal people do and Danny still can’t shake the sensation of this being scripted for him. He’s certain it’s just because all of the files he can pull up in his _relationships / past_ directory were created intentionally, that now even finding one hidden seems as if it should go with the rest. Pavlovian paranoia, too much time spent away from IRL to know what IRL’s meant to feel like anymore.

Surprising, perhaps. Unexpected. Biting his lip, Danny waits for James to shift gears, and reaches to clasp his fingers, thumb stroking over his knuckles as he grins against his own.

The older man smiles, casts his eyes down for just a moment before gently turning his fingers to hold against Danny's and squeeze. He doesn't let him go.

Danny wonders again why he can’t just take into stride that someone may be interested in him. Everyone he has been with has been, but this… without the pressure of a humming phone pinging him instructions, telling him what to look for, what to leave behind. It feels entirely novel. 

He feels like a child again.

James spreads his fingers and Danny follows suit, slotting them together again. He needs to shut off. Unplug. Unwind and go with it. 

For fuck’s sake, he’s got condoms in his pocket. He’s dressed to the nines - or at least something like a solid seven - to go to a restaurant with reservations booked weeks in advance. He’s twenty-three years old. He works his bloody arse off for the Society, be it building new DDoS botnets, writing rootkits, or worse.

Much worse.

He’s allowed to enjoy himself.

He _should_ enjoy himself.

Especially with a man like this.

Emboldened by his own buffering, Danny lifts their joined hands, his palm pressed to James’. He can feel his strength, from the tendons of his hand to the pneumatic pull of muscle in his arm. It presses the breath from Danny’s lungs and brings blood to his cheeks and tightens his belly in response to the magnetic pull tugging every part of him towards every part of James.

He brushes his lips across James’ fingertips, sighing warmth against them. No more than that, for now at least. For now, that’s enough to quiet the desperate yearning for physical contact and closeness and care that Danny aches for so intensely. He releases James’ hand as the restaurant comes into view, and they relinquish the car to a valet.

Danny notes James’ uncharacteristic concern about this, as well as his excessive tip to ensure the car is cared for and parked far away from any others.

It’s cute. He’s cute. Danny only just makes himself look away before James looks towards him, and instead focuses on the former industrial building before them. Old signage with old lettering, painted glass windows with arcane artwork of the tire company’s vintage mascot. It’s one of the nicest restaurants in the already-posh area, Michelin-starred and allegedly well worth the obscene cost.

That doesn’t stop Danny from leaning a little closer to James as he approaches, and murmuring, “I’ve never had a date in a tire factory.”

“I live to impress,” James tells him, smiling. He takes Danny’s hand to lead him inside, giving their name and straightening his shoulders as he follows their server to their table.

It is not a booth, but a stand alone table by the wall. In all ways unremarkable but for its proximity to the kitchen. He holds the chair for Danny to sit first and crosses his legs when he sits himself.

“I think the strangest place I have ever eaten was a restaurant in New Orleans,” James tells him, setting his elbow to the table to rest his chin against his fingers. “All the dishes were made with some kind of alcohol. It was extraordinary. As was the hangover the next morning.”

“I thought that cooking with liquor or wine burns the alcohol away,” Danny says, brows raised.

“Yes, but the paired drinks don’t follow that particular law.”

Danny laughs, ducking his head and smoothing his napkin to his lap. Is it too early to do that? They’ve only just sat down. Is there a point in the meal at which that should happen? James hasn’t touched his own, but he’s touching Danny’s hand suddenly, and Danny draws a breath.

He should’ve spent less time wanking and more time reading up on etiquette.

Their fingers curl together.

“I don’t know that it was a strange place to eat,” Danny says, shaking his head, “but the strangest meal I certainly remember. Few of us went to Iceland and happened in during some big festival, for Thor, I think. They’ve got a booze there with caraway seeds in it, tastes like drinking rye bread.”

James tilts his head, brow raised.

“No, no, that was the best part,” Danny tells him with a grin. “We were mad for it when we realized how well it washed away the taste of boiled sheep’s head and rotten shark.”

James snorts, that smile that changes his entire face and closes his eyes. His hand strokes lightly against Danny's, tracing one of his fingers with two of his own, up and down in a tickling tease.

“I can’t say I’ve been to Iceland.”

“Well worth a visit.”

“For the rotten shark?”

“And the liquefied rye bread,” Danny reminds him. Their server arrives and James orders two beers, without a care for the incredible wine list. The man leaves and James lets himself take in Danny, every detail and every motion.

“Where else should I go?” James asks him.

Danny considers the question, teeth pressed against his bottom lip, letting it slide slowly free. “I’m not very good at this,” he says.

“At going?”

Danny gives him a wry look, before letting his gaze settle on their fingers, tangled together. “I don’t travel very much at all. When I do, I like places that no one else wants to be. Makes me sound like a moody teenager,” he snorts. “But I live in London, you know, most of the time. I don’t want to go see another big city.”

“Somewhere quiet.”

“Desolate, more like. Actually alone instead of alone in a crowd. Estonia’s got beautiful forests,” he notes with a shrug, a squint, and a deflection. “What brought you to New Orleans? I’ve heard the whole city’s haunted.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Yes,” Danny says, with a laugh that he hopes sounds self-effacing rather than self-loathing.

James’ smile turns downwards for a moment, just the corners. His brows shift and then he blinks and the expression goes away.

“So do I,” he tells Danny. He brings a hand to his face and laughs, as Danny had. You don't fake exhaustion. You don't fake anguish. “I suppose I went to visit old ghosts to let go of my new ones. I was in good company.”

Their beer arrives and James sits back in his seat, still touching Danny's hand.

“Were you born here?”

“Twenty-three years ago,” Danny smirks. “So they tell me.”

“Don’t believe all you hear,” James tells him, taking up his glass to take a sip.

“I try not to make a habit of believing much of anything I hear.”

When James’ brow lifts, Danny raises his glass with a small smile, but genuine. They share a sadness, that much they let be known in their first conversation. They also share touch now. The same beer on their lips. Conversation, real face-to-face conversation, the likes of which Danny hasn’t had since…

_$ pwd  
/Users/danny/relationships/current  
$ ls  
james.txt  
$ more alex.txt  
alex.txt: No such file or directory_

“And you?” Danny asks after a moment, sucking the foam from his upper lip.

“Scotland, much more than twenty-three years ago,” he says. “One of your desolate places, out in the middle of nowhere.”

“You know,” Danny says, shaking his head. “I want desperately, right now, to tell you that I swear I’m not a weirdo loner wandering out on the moors and being moody. I mean, sometimes I’m that, but not all the time. I dance, a lot. I go out. And fucking hell, I sound neurotic right now and I didn’t mean to be, at all, and,” he stops suddenly, with a faltering laugh. “God. I must seem young, compared to the people you work with.”

_Yes._

James tilts his head and says nothing. It is an answer in itself, but he hardly seems disappointed. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Danny, always seeking over his face or over the rest of him. There is a want there but there is still that warmth too, that same caress Danny had felt walking by.

_You are the most innocent person I know._

“You are lovely,” James tells him, smiling again, gently gesturing for the server to return in a moment for their order. “If only you knew the turmoil that brews in me as I try to hold in my own neuroses. Wondering what you would think of a man who spends his evenings alone and enjoys it, who, once in a while, goes dancing.” James narrows his eyes. “Tango,” he clarifies.

Danny’s not even opened the menu. He’s not even hungry, so he looks between the waiter and James, and without needing to ask, James orders for him. It’s an exceptional moment of connection and Danny marvels in silence, hardly listening to what he’s saying so much as the fact that he’s saying it at all.

Just because Danny feels the shadows of ghosts around him doesn’t mean he has to live among them.

“Tango,” he says with a grin, nose wrinkling as the waiter departs. “Are you good at it?”

“I’d like to think so, but most who dance envision themselves to be, I think.”

“I’ve never tried. Not the same sort of dancing as I do,” he says, “but I would try.”

“I would gladly show you.”

“You asked me to be presumptuous,” Danny reminds them both, fingers squeezing a little as he leans back in his chair.

“I hope you listened,” James teases, uncrossing his legs and stretching them out beneath the table. Around them, the restaurant flourishes busy, quiet chatter and the clink of cutlery against fine china. “But I will gladly educate you in that as well, should the need arise.”

“That particular dance, I’m familiar with,” Danny snorts, amused. “But I’m always willing to learn from those who’ve had more practice at it.”

The pointed toe of James’ shoe brushes against Danny’s calf, a bare touch that feels like a bomb’s detonated, sucking all the air from Danny’s lungs and throwing sparks behind his eyes.

“Was that a crack about my age?” James asks.

“Or praise for it. Both, really.”

“You prefer older men as your dancing partners.”

“I prefer men who prefer me,” Danny says with a wide grin, shaking his head. “That’s it. That’s my type.”

James smiles, turning to look out the window. Danny can feel his pleasure waft from him like cologne. Their dinner arrives and he slips his own foot against James’ beneath the table.

At least, strange as it is, this restaurant is worth its hype. The food is delicious. Fish, Danny knows, but not what kind. A tangy wine is brought for them to enjoy with their meal when their empty beer glasses are taken away.

All the while, Danny keeps touching James. With his foot, his fingers, with the damn near physical eye contact they hold. And never once does it feel forced or dull. Never once does it feel anything but fucking intoxicating.

Danny wonders if James is hard from this, as he is. He wonders what level of presumptuous they are playing at, together. He wonders if it will be acceptable to snog the life out of the man as soon as they are out the door.

“You’re distracted,” James points out with a smile.

Danny ducks his head, the backs of his fingers turned against his mouth as he chews, wishing for all the world that he had another beer that might cool the heat in his cheeks. He lifts his napkin, daubing the corners of his mouth, then settles it again and hopes it hides his lap.

“From you,” he agrees, “by you.”

“Flatterer.”

“The truth,” Danny says, smile widening. “The food is excellent, though.”

“Though,” James muses, “that’s not what you’re thinking about.”

“No,” laughs Danny. “Not even a little. I should be, I know, I’m not unappreciative. It’s rare I get to eat anything like this. I should be savoring it. What kind of -”

“Danny.”

His fork stills, wedged in a fraying aromatic filet of fish. Danny lifts his gaze, unable to breathe for a moment when James’ eyes hold on his own. “Yes?”

“Hush,” James tells him with a smile, catching the waiter’s eye to ask after the bill.

Danny knows he should bristle at that, even such a mild and good-tempered reprimand. He should pull up short and insist not to be interrupted. He should tell James that he’s trying his best, and that he can’t stand when people are patronizing to him.

He would, if patronizing were in fact how James is acting.

He would, if the gentle admonishment didn’t make him want to find the floor with his knees and disappear beneath the tablecloth to bend his lips against the front of James’ trousers.

He would, if he didn’t want to be bossed like that again. And he does, fucking hell, he does.

James lets his gaze linger over Danny’s a moment more before he sets his own napkin against the table again. Both have finished most of their meals, neither for lack of hunger. Danny suspects neither eat much, nor have the chance to sit down to do it often. 

The check arrives and James doesn’t even let Danny see it before setting down his card with a smile. And even this doesn't feel like a patronizing gesture. Not telling him he is unable to afford it, so much as expressing the desire to, for him.

They sit a moment longer before James licks his lips and stands, watching Danny follow suit. He takes his hand on their way out, just as he had on their way in, folding his larger fingers against Danny's as they head towards the valet.

“It would be proper to ask you if I should drive you home,” James says softly as they wait for the car. “It would be proper to do so and wish you a good evening and tell you that I would like to see you again.”

Danny swallows, as the Aston Martin pulls up purring before them.

“Don’t drive me home,” he breathes, and James makes a sound then that goes right to his cock.

“Thank Christ,” he says. “I don’t think I would have had the strength.”

“But -”

“Oh no,” sighs James, laughing as he does. “Nothing good ever follows that.”

“Tell me you’d like to see me again anyway,” Danny grins.

He knows how adolescent it sounds, how bloody childish and overeager. It’s a laugh to pretend he’s managed at any point to seem like a functioning and capable adult tonight, let alone charming or mysterious. He is, in fact, none of those things.

And so he watches, holding hopefully to James’ hand as James reaches for the passenger door with the other.

“How about tomorrow morning?” James says. “For breakfast.”

Danny’s lips part, a note of dizzying delight caught laughing on his breath. He pushes higher to his toes, gaze seeking swift between James’ eyes, the wrinkles alongside, the slender curve of his smile. So close to kissing him that Danny imagines he can feel the heat of it, he resists, a modicum of come-hither in his hooded gaze, and with a winsome smile, turns to get into the car.

“Take me anywhere,” he says as he settles. “I don’t care.”

James gets in himself and to Danny's amusement takes a moment to adjust himself before putting the car into gear.

“Home, then,” he suggests, taking the first left and flooring it, well past the speed limit on that road. “To bed, perhaps.”

“Bed,” Danny agrees. “Or the couch. Or the floor.”

“Kitchen counter.”

“A particularly sturdy wall.”

“I have a terrace.”

“Little cold out for that, yeah?” Danny grins, failing to hide his pleasure against the backs of his fingers. James regards him for a moment before setting his eyes back to the road.

“I’m sure we’ll find ways to keep warm.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s too intimate already. Fond touches. Affectionate nearness. He’s always been a bloody sap, helpless to stop himself from falling for someone. Like plummeting headfirst off a fucking cliff, every time, every time someone makes him feel real and alive, even for a night. He’s not in love. He’s in love with love. He’s in love with that ruinous freefall that will smear him into pieces when he hits ground again._
> 
> _He’s already over the edge._
> 
> _Might as well enjoy the plunge._

Danny scarcely gets a glimpse of the half-empty flat before he’s grasped by the arm and spun back to face James. His hands lift to steady himself and then snare, fingers interlocking at the back of James’ neck. Thumbs pressing against his pulse on either side, Danny arches to his booted toes and his eyes hood.

The tips of their noses touch.

Their lips pass so near that Danny swears there’s a static spark between them.

Firm hands hold him snug, palms pressed to his skinny waist. He’s so hard it hurts, like being booted in the gut. Buzzed on drink but drunk on James, Danny manages a laugh.

“Going to show me how to tango?”

“Perhaps.” His voice is downright filthy, so low it rumbles against Danny's chest. Their noses brush again and James gently nips against Danny's lip when he tries to kiss him. His breath comes heavier, though he controls it, and Danny could melt against him were he allowed.

“What then?”

“Can I be blunt?”

“Please.” His voice is damn near a moan.

“I want,” he whispers, nosing against him, one hand up to slip through Danny’s hair, gently curling in it, “to fuck you breathless before I offer you a nightcap.”

Now, Danny does moan, wanton and horny and burning hot from the friction of his racing pulse. Simply being seen was enough, validated as a real person who really exists. To be touched was a delight, further edification of not his own reality but a larger one. But to be held, pulled, grasped, wanted, _demanded_... it’s a wonder to Danny that he’s not already come in his pants like an overeager teenager.

Lifting his eyes, watching James in flashes of weathered skin and unabashed desire through his own messy curls, Danny lowers a hand from the older man’s neck. He follows the hard rise of James’ bicep, down over his elbow, seeking over his undoubtedly expensive watch to grasp his wrist. Danny is aware they’ve not actually kissed yet. That almost makes it better. He pushes up higher to his toes at the same time as he guides James’ hand down, down beneath the waistband of his trousers and past his tucked shirt, down into the humid confines of his pants, down over the swell of his ass and with a gasp, Danny slides his finger over James’ own and pushes it gently between his cheeks.

“Please,” Danny whispers.

The older man shudders, full-bodied and entirely beautiful, and slips his other hand down into Danny’s pants as well. Squeezing, grasping, he hoists him closer, up against the wall, and Danny hooks his legs around James’ waist.

And then he kisses him.

Deep and sloppy and just as Danny had imagined. They devour each other, James’ fingers teasing against Danny’s hole, slipping further to stroke the back of his balls.

They break to breathe, pressing their noses alongside each other, eyes closed. Danny seeks over James’ face, tugs his hair, draws his nails over his scalp until the older man laughs and straightens himself, from hips to shoulders, rubbing against Danny until both moan and James kisses him again.

Danny shoves his shoulders to the wall, hands between them to tug open his belt and unzip himself. He hardly has room to move with James’ body shoved against his own, trousers altogether too tight and stretched tighter still by his own rock-hard cock and James’ hands on his ass. He’s chastened for even the distance needed to stop his waistband rubbing rough red lines against his belly, his mouth punished beneath a forceful kiss that catches their lips against their teeth.

Noses bumping, their mouths twist together again, breath hissed loud against the other’s cheek. He lifts his hands to James’ hair, dark gold as honey and thick between his fingers. Danny tries to pull him back enough to breathe, but even when they do their lips remain touching, mouths open, sharing air and heat and heartbeat in the negative space between their kiss.

This. This is what Danny wants. He doesn’t want to guide, gentle and patient. He doesn’t want to top. He doesn’t want anything that will call up files from _/Users/danny/relationships/past_. He wants to be grabbed by his waist, bent and fucked until it hurts, turned over and held by his wrists and the back of his knee and fucked again. This is what he needs, and who he needs it from. A man strong enough to lift him from the wall again now and carry him - bloody well _carry_ him - into the flat, with Danny curled lithe and little around him. He curls his fingernails down James’ jacket, expensive fabric catching as he claws.

“Hard,” he whispers, panting breathless already. “So hard I have to limp to the shower afterward.”

James just kisses him roughly again, agreement and delight and pleasure in the display of dominance to a boy who genuinely wants it so bad he could sob for it. It should feel patronizing but it doesn’t. It should feel overwrought and ridiculous but it fucking doesn’t. 

As soon as Danny is lowered to the bed he crab-crawls backwards, taunting and teasing James to follow as he squirms free of his pants. He laughs when they catch at his ankles, around his boots, and more when James pauses to undo them.

_Sex should be fun._

Even when he wants to feel entirely bloody used.

_Sex should be special._

He feels clearer than he has in days, reaching to tug at James’ jacket, at his tie, his shirt, anything he can reach. Both claw at the other’s clothes, determined to get each other bare, and when they do they lay panting for a moment just taking the other in. James is fit, exceptionally fit for any age let alone old enough to be his father. Taut abs and firm chest, a dusting of pale hair across it. Thick arms and wide shoulders and a perfect convex curve where they rise to meet his neck.

He’s fucking glorious.

Danny damn near lunges from the bed, ass in the air as he holds himself up with one hand and seeks through the pockets of his pants with the other. James kisses against his back, nosing every vertebra, breathing hot into the dip where Danny’s ass curves down to meet his thighs. He is patient but hardly bored by it. He watches Danny search and curse and grins slow when he finally holds up the little foil packet, victorious.

“Something presumptuous,” he declares, and James grabs him around the middle to hoist him back into bed. Danny laughs as he’s hauled back, as if he weighs nothing at all, sheets bunching under his body. He squirms as if to escape just to feel James’ hands grip him harder, every touch sparking to life deadened nerves, every whisper of skin against skin warming away the numb chill that sunk nearly to his bones. With a sound too high and eager to be anything less than needy, Danny pushes his chest against the bed and presents himself.

James’ mouth against his ass is nearly enough to crash Danny’s system entirely.

His lips curve hot and sucking, obscene in the wet noises, glorious in the rough treatment of sensitive skin. His tongue is just as powerful as the rest of him, stroking in long flat laps and plunging deep into Danny’s all-too ready hole. Neatly tended fingernails press scraping into his cheeks, holding him so wide that Danny shakes, clumsily snaring the sheets just to have something to squeeze.

He’s not in control of the sounds he makes, but fuck if he’s not proud to pour them out in shameless gratitude.

James devours him, entirely devoted to getting Danny off as he had been in studying him, as he had been in impressing him and enjoying his company. The man does nothing by halves, Danny wonders if he’s even capable of the notion. He tongues Danny until he shivers, arches deeper into the bed and shoves a hand down between his legs to hold his cock and his orgasm at bay. Only then does James relent, reaching to thread his fingers with Danny’s and take the condom from him.

“God, look at you,” James whispers, bending to kiss hot against Danny’s ass, his thighs, his back, as he works open the little foil packet and rolls the condom onto himself with a groan of need. Danny didn’t even get to look at him properly; he merely imagines how dark it is with blood, heavy, veined and throbbing and it’s enough to nearly push him over then and there.

He shifts his legs wider apart and clenches his muscles before relaxing them. “Please.”

“Shameless,” James praises him, “wanton, needy, incredible thing. Hold still.”

Danny’s voice cracks, moan pitching too high, too quickly, when James sets his palm against the small of Danny’s back. Obedient, eager, driven by pure animal need to get thoroughly fucked, his spine curves towards the bed and he shoves his hips higher. He can hardly find breath enough to stop his vertigo, let alone to create words amidst his moans, so Danny lets his body beg instead.

With no fingers, and no more lube than that which slicks the condom already and James’ cooling spit, the blunt pressure of James’ cock against his hole burns. Danny’s sure he’ll be torn apart, James is not small from the feel of it, girthy and thick, stretching quivering muscle wider and wider. When the flared corona of his cockhead pops through, tears spill slick from the corners of Danny’s eyes. His breath hitches, he’s laughing and crying all at once, pain and pleasure one in the same in an ecstatic rush of sensation.

“More,” he pleads, turning his cheek against the sheets to watch James’ form on his knees behind him. He reaches back with tingling fingers and his hand is brought to rest against the small of his back, wrist held in place. He splays his touch, curls it, bends his fingertips’ against James’ hand. “Please, James, I need -”

“Hush,” James says. “I know what you need.”

Danny’s cock jerks so hard at the words that it nearly touches his belly, and he curses, breathless, against the bed.

Despite the pressure, the lack of prep, the pain that Danny asked for and begged for and wanted, James is gentle in penetrating him. Shallow thrusts and turns of his hips push him deeper and deeper into the yielding body before him. He touches on the sensitive spot inside Danny and passes it almost deliberately, seeking to fill, now, not yet to pleasure.

One hand seeks down against Danny’s trembling back and folds into his curls, gently grasping them to tug before James presses a hot kiss just behind his ear.

Only then does he start to move, and he moves slowly, just testing the waters for response. He pushes and holds, breathing hot against Danny’s cheek until the other laughs, moans and shivers. He pulls slow and shoves in hard again, just to make Danny’s breath hitch. He reads every motion and every sigh, giving Danny what he wants before he can even voice that he wants it.

It’s surreal, like being made love to by his daydream and fantasy rolled into one.

When James speeds up, it becomes a thorough fucking, but even in that he is never not gentle, pausing under semblance of catching his breath to check that the body beneath him trembles with need and not in pain, that Danny’s moans and pleas are for more, not to stop. A breath off-beat when James releases his hair finds that firm hand fisted in his curls again. Bending his neck, Danny is pulled a little harder, to keep him deeply bent and his voice freed from the mattress.

Over and over, James reads and responds. Over and over, he fills body and thought and spirit.

He doesn’t try to touch himself again. He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need to ask or beg or play coy or do anything but _take it_ and there’s nothing more in the world he wants than that. Every bump of James’ balls against his own, every clap of skin as he’s roughly taken, every grunt and gasp and growl is greater than even the rising ecstasy of impending climax.

James bends across his back again, coarse pubic hair tickling Danny’s hot, swollen hole. Buried deep enough that there isn’t room in Danny’s body to even take a breath, thrusting unrelenting pressure against his prostate, Danny tilts his gaze just enough to see the glass window overlooking London.

Just enough to see their reflection, Danny bent and curved, slight and pale, and James mounting him, spine curled and body hunched.

The flashpoint flares bright. Danny’s lips slacken soundless. His cock gouts wet ribbons of come, belly clenching, ass clenching, heart fucking clenching so hard that it feels like the first time he did speed and the world came to a stop but for his own existence as singularity.

Danny thought nothing could ever feel that good again.

He was wrong.

James pants against him, fingers easing from the rough grip on his hand to seek over his neck, holding there gently to feel Danny’s pulse skitter and speed. Then he slides it lower still, to press over Danny’s collarbone slick with sweat. Lower, lower to the peaked nipples that he caresses with the rough pad of his thumb before softly squeezing.

How Danny manages to pulse more is beyond him, but he does, lights shattering and bursting behind his eyes, lips parted wide and sounds coming from him that he can’t even begin to hide.

And then James stills behind him, managing one breaking huff of air before his cock twitches and pulses inside Danny and he allows his release to wash over him too.

They are both shaking, and despite how weak James must feel - if Danny’s own orgasm is anything to go by - he holds a strong arm around Danny’s middle to hold him up until James pulls out of him and lays heavily at his side. With a groan, James slips a hand down to tug the condom off and tie it, his other hand pressing to his eyes as he turns to look at the young man in bed at his side. He smiles, languid and lazy as a cat in summer, and turns his head against the pillow as though to nuzzle it as he shifts closer to Danny again.

Danny dries his cheeks against the pillow, laughing abashed at the outpouring of reaction as he begins to return to himself. His ass aches, his back is sore, his skin tingles in ripples of goosebumps and he slowly collapses flat to the bed. A wincing wriggle brings him to his side, aware that he’s laying in his own damp mess, and uncaring except that it makes his softening cock twitch to think about it.

He moans - just a breath given voice, but an unaffected response all the same - when James runs his fingers along his cheek, and follows the curve of his jaw. Without taking his eyes off James, Danny tilts his head to chase his fingertips, lips curving across their pads as they pass over his mouth.

It’s too intimate already. Fond touches. Affectionate nearness. He’s always been a bloody sap, helpless to stop himself from falling for someone. Like plummeting headfirst off a fucking cliff, every time, every time someone makes him feel real and alive, even for a night. He’s not in love. He’s in love with love. He’s in love with that ruinous freefall that will smear him into pieces when he hits ground again.

He’s already over the edge.

Might as well enjoy the plunge.

He kisses James’ fingers again and lifts a hand to press James’ palm to his cheek, to hide his grin. “Want to go again?”

James blinks at him and snorts, turning his face into the pillow as he continues to gently hold to Danny’s cheek. He shifts himself closer again, and draws his thumb over Danny’s eyebrow as he kisses him, deep and long, sighing out against wet skin.

“Absolutely,” he murmurs, catching Danny’s eyes with his own hooded gaze and holding it. He is like an enormous cat, blinking slowly and settling on his side close enough to share heat between them. Danny can feel his cock flaccid against his thigh and smiles, knowing that come a few more hours, a few more teases, they will be tangled in the sheets and in each other again.

This is what being normal must feel like.

A chance meeting. A sudden spark. Awkward admissions giving way to easy conversation. Sharing food and sharing breath. Kissing and fucking and touching and resting.

Danny hasn’t forgotten that James promised breakfast. He makes no motion now, in body or temperament, to indicate he wants Danny to leave. It’s all going so fucking well that Danny can’t contain another little laugh before he nuzzles closer, pressed tightly together, their lips touching in a far less bruising kiss than the ones before.

He can feel the missing files of his recent activities by their absence. Habit makes him seek for them, having spent the last few weeks doing little more than reliving those memories, but he stops himself from letting them open. Deliberate distraction comes in the form of his fingertips following the soft swath of hair across James’ chest, tapping along a collarbone that he can feel has been broken, seeking over a curious scar.

He leans close enough to kiss the puckered dark skin on James’ shoulder, and lifts his eyes in question.

“Stabbing,” James replies, bringing a hand up to stroke carefully through tangled curls. “Perks of the job, or so they tell me.”

Danny blinks at him, and James offers an apologetic smile. _Security_ , he had said. Strangely, the confirmation of his truth is enough to unsettle Danny for a moment. It hits home - carefully, slowly, like a seed taking root - that James’ job is as dangerous, as exhausting, perhaps as unfulfilling most days as Danny’s own. It hits home - carefully, slowly - that he is not lying.

The relief is so striking that it takes Danny a moment to catch his breath again. And then he kisses against the scar, careful lips and gentle tongue. James shivers beneath the touch but does not tell him to stop, so Danny doesn’t.

“Two years ago,” James continues. “Some asshole with too large an ego and an underdeveloped survival instinct.”

Danny imagines James dark-eyed and snarling, blood splashing scarlet down his chest, soaking into his uniform. What sort of uniform? It doesn’t matter really. It stains dark but gouts red and thick as he jerks the knife from his own shoulder to keep his assailant at bay. It’s distressing to imagine him later, steel-jawed and pale as he’s stitched together again.

It’s also more than a little hot. It is _extremely_ hot.

“Was he arrested?” Danny asks, drawing the tip of his nose across the scar before seeking out James’ throat instead, lips bending against his pulse.

James hums, enough that he knows that Danny can feel the vibration against his lips, and turns to lie on his back, stretching and spreading comfortably in bed. There is a pause as he considers, perhaps thinks back to confirm, through the haze of sex and satiated pleasure. He licks his lips.

“I suspect he was,” James says. “But not by me, that’s outside of my jurisdiction.”

Danny smiles, hoping it conveys contentment with the answer and reassurance - that Danny finds this admirable, and in some strange way that James isn’t in danger here.

He means those things. He feels them genuinely.

But there is an itch at the back of his skull that’s just as real. It’s not beyond him to consider the potential benefit to finding out more, utilizing his particular position - currently with a leg wedged between James’ own and lube drying on his ass - to pry a little deeper. Even if he’s just a security guard, there’s information to be gleaned from that, easy to work free with innocent inquiries and kisses as question marks.

The impulse distresses him. He doesn’t want to catfish James. He doesn’t want a lovely date and exceptional sex to be pretextual. He wants to know James for James, not for what he can do for the benefit of Society. Dating, not blagging. Intimacy, not falsehoods. Something for Danny, maybe, just for him, rather than everyone else.

“It’s very dashing,” Danny reassures him, grinning as James’ smile widens. When Danny laughs, he means that too, truly means it, and he shivers closer when James’ hands press against his back. “And you are a very talented dance partner,” he adds, murmuring warm against James’ lips.

“And you are a wonderful person to lead,” James replies, raising his brows and tugging Danny closer so they lay like sardines pressed together. He slips his hands large and gentle over Danny’s back, to his hair and down to his ass, where he squeezes in teasing reminder before letting Danny go again.

“Did you still want that nightcap?” James asks him, drawing up a knee to hold Danny closer. “Or would you rather limp to the shower?”

“Is it worth a shower if we’re to get filthy again?”

“Oh, absolutely,” James nods sagely. “For one thing, I get to watch you limp, knowing I was the cause of it, after your sweet pleading.” His smile is wide before it eases to something softer, and James tilts his head against the pillow. “For another, showers are incredible places for inspiration.”

“Inspiration?”

“Surely there’s more you’d like to do than what we just did,” James says, amused. “Or at least more positions.”

Danny’s nose wrinkles when he grins, shaking his head in fond disbelief. How did he manage this? How out of everyone in the world is Danny the one who gets to lay beside this charming older gentleman who fucks like he’s nineteen? He won’t ask about the job again. He won’t pry into anything James doesn’t want to tell him. He’ll be normal, for once, a good dancing partner and maybe even a good boyfriend, if things go well.

He’ll be more man than machine, and the thought is thrilling.

“A nightcap then,” Danny agrees. “Something sweet. D’you mind if I smoke? On the terrace, I mean, I wouldn’t here. Before I go to shower.”

“Of course,” James says, before they share another kiss, and then another. And then one more caught laughing between them as Danny works himself free from their tangle of limbs. He winces, spitting a soft curse as his muscles snare sharp, all the way up to his tailbone and beyond. Resisting the urge to reach back and finger himself, just to feel how stretched he is, Danny does make sure to bend away from James as he ducks to pick up his trousers.

James’ low, purring hum says everything.

Straightening languidly, he slips on his boxers and nothing more, carrying with him his cigarettes, phone, and a delighted smile that he shares with James across his shoulder as he goes.

James doesn’t follow, content to remain comfortably reclined in bed, eyes barely open, as Danny goes about what he needs to do.

On the terrace, the cool air hits Danny like a slap in the face, but he doesn’t return inside to get anything else to wear. Instead, he sets a cigarette between his lips and lights up, enjoying the way his body trembles from sensation, emotion, the cold, all at once.

His phone is quiet, when he checks it. Not altogether unusual but it makes him frown regardless. He does a quick scan of his emails, all accounts, of his fake social media, deleting all the preloaded likes on shit he didn’t even post. It’s strangely soothing, standing out here, above London, wearing next to nothing and feeling, still, the throbbing thickness of James’ cock within him. 

As it will be again.

Tonight, definitely - later, perhaps if he’s lucky. Danny takes another drag and closes his eyes as he exhales. He doesn’t chase it to the filter, casting ash with furious flicks of his thumbnail. The heightened rhythm of nicotine now drums a plucky pulse within his blood. He’s not felt this good in weeks. Maybe even longer, since there’s no looming fucking dread weighing him down.

There is interest. Curiosity. A little intrigue in that they’ve only just met and James has already been inside him, but neither eager to talk about their lives outside of the other’s orbit.

Maybe that’s okay.

Danny’s spent his life hiding himself behind masks, becoming someone unreal, everyone, no one at all. He leaves no digital footprints outside of his knowledge. For all intents and purposes, the real Danny doesn’t exist. But perhaps he can, now. Why can’t he build a persona for himself for once, a real being in which to exist?

_/JOIN #irl  
*** Now talking in #irl  
*** goonch has joined channel #irl  
/nick DannyHolt  
*** goonch is now known as DannyHolt_

He laughs, folding his arm against the railing and resting his head against it. The cherry flares as he takes a drag. Maybe it is that easy. Sort out his files. Delete what he doesn’t need. Rewrite his code line by line as he encounters bugs that could trip him up.

Light from within the flat brings him to straighten, stretching with a grimace against the barrier. He doesn’t need to turn back to know he’s being watched. He doesn’t need to hear James’ hum when he cocks his hip, boxers hanging low, just off center. Sweat dries cold against him in the chill wind and with one more drag to polish off his cigarette, Danny flicks it to the street below before returning inside.

James is at the counter in his kitchen - enormous, now that Danny actually has time to take it in - wearing as little as Danny is as he pours them two fingers worth of something rich and heady. He passes Danny the snifter with a smile, and runs a hand over his back as Danny steps closer.

“There are easier ways to go than freezing oneself on the balcony.”

“Who says I want to go?” Danny asks, leaning back against the counter and taking a sip. Brandy, he thinks, something fruity. It will linger on his tongue and warm him entirely and he will think of this taste mingled with James’ sweat when he next lies in bed alone and rubs one off.

“You know exactly the effect you have on me, don’t you?” James chastens him, smiling when Danny grins.

“I’ve got an idea, yeah,” he laughs. “But I’m not good at -”

“Being absolutely intoxicating?”

Danny grins again, nose wrinkling, and he shakes his head.

“Alright,” James says. “Being exceptionally charming.”

“Definitely not good at that.”

“How about being simply adorable?”

“That’s not so much a skill as something I was born with,” Danny says, brow lifting lofty as he takes another sip. James’ tongue parts his lips and he laughs.

“So you do know that at least.”

“I wouldn’t toss myself out of bed for eating crackers,” Danny shrugs.

James snorts, sets his glass down and hoists Danny to the counter. Stepping to rest between his legs, he takes his drink up again and watches Danny take one of his own, cheeks still flushed.

“I suppose that we will have to negotiate,” James murmurs, tilting his head in a nuzzle against Danny’s chest as the young man laughs. “But later. After a drink. After a shower. After I bend you over the kitchen counter.”

Cheeks bright, Danny sets his cigarettes and phone aside, and splays his fingers against the cold granite beneath him. It’s all at once uncomfortable, ass twitching tender, and a relief to feel cool pressure against still-hot skin through his boxers’ thin threads. He tilts his cheek against his shoulder with a coy smile, and lifts a foot against the inside of James’ calf, stroking the coarse hair there with his toes.

“Are you always this hospitable to all the strange young men you pick up in bars at midday?”

“Only the intoxicating, charming, and especially adorable ones.”

“Have a lot of those, do you?” Danny grins.

“One I am very fond of,” James tells him, leaning nearer again, setting his legs wider obediently as Danny continues to tease. He lets his fingers fold over Danny’s where he splays his hands and he presses a kiss hot to the center of Danny’s chest. “The rest come and go.”

The tease is clear, but it’s as amusing as it is astounding to Danny how the warm flare of jealousy hits him regardless of knowing - with certainty - that James is joking. Carefully, he folds his legs around James’ middle and holds him close, ankles hooked against the small of his back.

He brings his drink to his lips to deliberately finish it before setting it aside with a hum.

“I do most of my coming and going alone these days,” Danny says, watching as James touches another kiss to the center of his sternum. Greying scruff rubs rough against his chest, boyishly smooth.

“You’ll forgive me if I find that hard to believe,” muses James.

“I find it hard, too,” snorts Danny. “Often.”

Another kiss presses him back further, to his elbows now, lips parting in sympathy each time James’ lips brush his skin. His heart stumbles faster as he makes his way for a nipple, already pebbled hard and dark, and James’ breath across it earns him a genuine sound of delight and dismay both.

James makes a soothing sound back. “You’re young,” he tells Danny, nosing around a nipple before licking a thick stripe over it. “You hardly need time to recover.”

“But I do need it,” Danny laughs, slipping a hand through James’ hair, as James immediately takes his weight with his free hand so that Danny doesn’t slip onto the counter. “Time. To recover.”

“You’ve had some.”

“James.”

“Hmm?”

Danny meets his gaze, and his eyes narrow.

“Help me get my boxers off.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He should have said he wouldn’t come back. Another day, maybe, another time. He needs to get on his computer and dig himself into code and pretend like the rest doesn’t matter. He needs an alibi, he needs to find out who the hell is on his ass about Alex’s death, he needs to figure out what the police have that Society hasn’t been able to track._
> 
> _There’s something, there has to be something._
> 
> _There’s always a glitch, no matter how good the system._

They share six orgasms in less than twenty-four hours.

Not that Danny’s counting. He definitely isn’t keeping each one in mind with near-hyperthymestic detail. And he absolutely isn’t going to recall them when finally work or real life forces them apart again and he’s alone and furiously wanking to the memory of each glistening drop of come or the way James’ chest hair tickles his nipples or the forceful smiling commands that James purrs into his ear.

_lulz_

That is exactly what Danny is doing.

Once each in bed, the first time. A blowjob for Danny on the kitchen counter. A hand job for James in the shower after, feet slipping, each clutching the other to stop from falling.

Then, enmeshed in a tangle of sticky limbs and tangled sheets, they slept. And when Danny woke first he disappeared beneath the blankets to nurse James’ cock to attention with naughty, noisy little sucking sounds. Stroking himself, James hardened in his mouth before finally pulling Danny atop him. He rode James until he was shaking, until James pulled out and came all along the underside of Danny’s cock and Danny finished in a spectacular spray along James’ torso, high enough to spatter the hollow of his throat.

The day’s half bloody gone when Danny awakens enough to check his phone and stumble outside for a fag, wrapped in James’ hoodie and grumbling about coffee.

Outside, the cool air is enough to help wake him, though he wants nothing more than to curl up on top of James and sleep the day away, unmoving. He scratches against his scalp, hair messy from drying mashed against the bed the night before, and he holds the cigarette between his lips as he unlocks his phone and squints at it.

Behind him, he can hear James moving around the kitchen, as sleepy and slow as Danny is, though dressed down in a pair of dark briefs and nothing else. He’s just setting something to the stove when Danny smells the coffee, rich and hot and dark, and moans for it, loud enough, apparently, to pull an amused look from James inside.

James crooks his finger at him and Danny grins, shaking his head and holding up the cigarette. The hoodie is huge on him, sleeves falling down to cover his fingers, to cover midway down his thighs. He watches as James raises an eyebrow and deliberately takes a sip of coffee for himself, not bringing any out to Danny to have.

Danny blinks, lips parting as if the mug were pressed against them. He fixates on the way James sucks his bottom lip into his mouth to draw the taste of coffee from it. He fixates on the way James’ fingers - knuckles gnarled in a way that appears counterintuitively elegant - wrap around the cup itself, not the handle.

Placing his cigarette between his lips, Danny presses his palms together in pleading prayer.

James gives him a wry look.

Danny furrows his brow and folds his fingers together instead, even more emphatic than before.

James simply shakes his head.

Sighing, Danny takes the cigarette from his lips and forms a circle with his fingers, cigarette between them. Lips rounded to an ‘O’, he brings his tunneled hand towards his mouth, and presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek. His brows raise, imploring.

James snorts and watches him, bare feet cold on the balcony, one foot standing atop the other as Danny squirms in adorable need for coffee. After a while, James makes his way to the balcony and opens the door, accepting the deep kiss immediately pressed against him as he hands the mug over to Danny.

“Life saver.”

“Demanding git.” James nuzzles against him a moment more before leaning back into the flat and closing the door to let Danny have his smoke. Danny can feel the man’s keen eyes on him as he deliberately bends over the railing to look down, toes pressed to the tile, hoodie riding up enough to reveal his boxers, one hem tucked up higher than the other.

He savors the first cigarette after marathon sex. He savors the coffee even more, rich with the taste of chocolate and berries, expensive and well-brewed and a far sight fucking better than the instant crap that Danny usually makes for himself. Lifting a foot, Danny scratches the back of his calf with his toes, smiling to himself when his shorts ride up a little higher.

Just as the coffee tastes unlike that to which Danny is unfortunately accustomed, so too this flirtation feels wholly novel. There’s no purpose to it, inherently. He’s not trying to make himself into anything he’s not and he’s not trying to use it to get from James anything more than this.

A cup of coffee and a fond touch. A lingering look and a chastening murmur.

Hell, he’s not even sure he could take another round right now, were James to want it. Plus-one to him if he does, of course. For a man twice Danny’s age he’s even pushed Danny to the point of wonderful physical exhaustion.

He flicks his cigarette away and takes another sip just to feel the contrast of heat and cold. As he turns to slide open the door, his pocket - well, James’ pocket - buzzes. A spoofed SMS number he recognizes flashes him a message.

_irc?_

Danny blinks, shaking his head quickly before he types back: _can’t, not near comp_. He closes the door behind himself, nearly tripping over the coffee table as he adds: _why?_

 _inquest verdict_ , comes the reply. _unlawful killing, reinvestigation pending_

“Shit,” Danny sighs, frowning at his phone before locking it and sliding it into his pocket again. He pads quietly into the kitchen and leans over the counter in a stretch, pressing his forehead against James’ side as the other works.

“You’ve exhausted me.”

“Have I?”

Danny snorts and pushes his hands against the counter to lean over it instead. He eyes the coffee and lets his attention slip to James for a moment, as though to silently ask permission to get more. The older man merely cocks an eyebrow and flips a pancake expertly on the small pan.

“You really are always like this, aren’t you,” Danny laughs, reaching to fill his mug again and top up James’.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” James grins. “I warned you at dinner.”

“Warnings that sound like promises don’t exactly create a sense of caution.”

“Depends on the warning.”

“Depends on the promise,” Danny grins, turning to lean back against the counter. He runs a hand through his hair as though it might help, at all, to smooth the curls he can feel standing every which way. He sets his hands back to his mug. He taps his fingernails.

He’s acting fucking nervous.

No.

He is nervous. _Inquest_ this and _reinvestigation_ that. And keeping his internal files buried in distant directories can only work so well when even the bloody root path makes him uneasy. James lifts his gaze and his lips part, and all at once Danny remembers how astutely he read his body the night before. Their first time together, and already keenly aware of everything Danny didn’t even realize he needed.

If he could tell from no more than a skipped heartbeat that Danny likes his hair pulled, James sure as shit can read the shadows creasing Danny’s brow.

Danny’s apology perches on his lips just as James asks, “How many would you like?”

Pancakes.

He’s making fucking pancakes.

Danny laughs, relieved to hear that he can, relieved more that it feels like an actual release. James’ overlarge hoodie slips lower over his shoulder as he shrugs, and Danny doesn’t bother to fix it. He regards their breakfast with interest. “Three, I think.”

“Only? I know you’ve burnt off far more calories than that.”

“For now,” Danny says, smiling slightly. Lifting his mug, he pauses, steam warming his lips.

_$ mv kaliriver.app coffee.app_

He takes a sip and hums, chest expanding with warmth and a deep sigh. “Remind me never again to go more than twelve hours without this,” he murmurs. “It’s got me bloody wired now.”

“You’re an addict,” James points out.

“Says the pot to the kettle.”

At this the older man hums, slipping one perfectly oval pancake to Danny’s plate. Sliding it over so he can eat it while it’s hot, James pours batter enough for another. He stands near enough to lean against Danny when he shifts, and both stand quietly for a time. One cooks as the other eats, both sipping their coffees, and enjoying the closeness and comfort the other brings them.

“Do you have something to use the energy on?” James asks, slipping Danny the second pancake just as he finishes his first. When the younger man snorts and lifts his eyes to him, James regards him with a completely serious expression. Danny shrugs.

“Nothing pressing.”

Lie.

“Might need to check in on some of my work emails.”

Partial truth.

“Nothing major.”

Lie.

Goddammit. It was hardly this hard the night before, before everything went to hell. Again. Danny restrains a grimace at the now-familiar copper taste in his mouth he hates so much. He sighs a shivering sound when James kisses his hair.

“Should I let you go then?” He asks. “After breakfast.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Danny says with a smile. “Not after breakfast, and not after that after, either.”

He sets his mug aside and brings his coffee-warmed fingers to rest against the small of James’ bare back. Fingertips trace the dimples there, and follow up the notches of his spine. His kisses brush across James’ shoulder, each one placed and held until he feels his heart begin to still.

Danny should go. He should get back to his computer, jump on IRC, and find out what’s going on. He should sit in the fucking dark like the shut-in he knows himself to be and brace for whatever’s coming, outside his control now. He should pack his shit and get ready to disappear. By statistical chance alone there’s a probability he left more evidence behind than he intended. By moral law, if this is indeed a universe in which wrong-doings are rightly rectified, he should be caught and punished for what he’s done.

Part of him wants to be.

The thought curls his stomach enough that it makes a sound, and he laughs a little. In moments like these, Danny can’t help but wonder what the fuck is so wrong with his own wiring that he’s found himself in this particular life rather than the one newly blossoming before him. James hums when Danny kisses the back of his neck, nose tickled by the short, fine hairs there.

“You could come back,” James says, watching Danny over his shoulder. “I wish you would.”

Danny grins despite himself, and draws his nose along the curve of James’ neck and up into his hair. He breathes in the scent of clean sweat and soap. He resists the urge to ask about the security of James’ network. It’s not as if Danny’s not got firewalls up the arse, PGP encryption, and Society’s VPN to keep himself from prying eyes. It’s as good as one can do, apparently, and a far sight better than sitting alone in his shitty makeshift flat and hating himself.

He’s done far too much of that recently.

“I can run and grab my computer,” Danny offers. “I need cigarettes, anyway.”

A toothbrush. A change of clothes. An overnight bag that will allow him to play pretend for a little while longer.

James smiles his agreement, pleased with this particular compromise, and slips a third pancake atop the second that Danny has yet to eat. Then he turns to kiss his forehead.

“Eat first,” he murmurs. “Then I’ll consider letting you go long enough to get something.”

Danny laughs and ducks his head in a nod, reaching for his plate and turning to rest his back against James’ arm as he eats. He savors the fluffiness of the pancakes, the ease with which they were made - _for him_ , no less, as James only then reaches for an egg to crack into the pan next for himself. It’s all so bloody domestic.

It’s wonderful.

Danny eats quietly, and James doesn’t force conversation. Seemingly content to sip his coffee, he works his eggs in the pan and tosses a piece of bread into the toaster when they’re very nearly done. It’s midday yet neither seem to care. Danny has no job calling him that he could possibly be late for and James makes no indication that he’s in a hurry either.

“I might take a shower when you go,” James murmurs, turning his nose against Danny’s hair as he sets his plate down and turns to him as well. “Will leave the door open a crack so you can get back in.”

“To the shower?”

“If you like,” James says, eyes narrowing as he smiles. “I’d like that too, although the water’s bound to be a little cold by the time you get back.”

“I’m not that far out.”

“I’ll be all pruney.”

“How terribly attractive,” Danny declares, delighted. “There’s few things that get me harder than cold, damp, wrinkled men.”

“Christ,” laughs James, and Danny grins in triumph.

“I’ll try to be quick,” he promises. James grasps Danny’s jaw lightly, lifting their lips together. “I will be quick,” corrects Danny, and his cheeks ache from smiling when he’s kissed deeper for this. A sigh parts their mouths, sweetly flavored with buttery pancakes and the warm bitterness of coffee, and Danny relents again. “I promise I’ll be quick.”

“Good,” James smiles, before kissing him again and letting Danny go. He follows him to the bedroom only as far as the bed itself, bending over it to pull his sleep pants within grasp so he can take them to the bathroom with him and change. Danny reluctantly slips into his pants and boots, but keeps James’ hoodie over his bare skin as he heads towards the door.

With a respectfully quiet click, he lets the door close and then bounds down the stairs, skipping the elevator.

He should have said he wouldn’t come back. Another day, maybe, another time. He needs to get on his computer and dig himself into code and pretend like the rest doesn’t matter. He needs an alibi, he needs to find out who the hell is on his ass about Alex’s death, he needs to figure out what the police have that Society hasn’t been able to track.

There's something, there has to be something.

There’s always a glitch, no matter how good the system.

He’s got his bugs and errors, too. He’s not a fucking professional hit man, he’s an erstwhile script kiddie who happens to be cute and got in over his head in every possible way. He’s got nothing against whatever tech the Met or MI5 has in their labs, and research from the outside only goes so far. He kept his tracks clean as best he could, but they know he was attached.

Is attached.

Fuck.

But even those groups aren’t without their faults and that’s what Danny knows - bloody _knows_ \- he should be focused on. No doubt Society’s deep in the weeds trying to slip into their systems. No doubt once they’re there, they’ll leave just as quietly with information in hand. He should be helping them, cranking coffee and coke in equal measure, wrapping himself in cigarette smoke as he works until his shoulders hurt.

Paranoia is the moment after a mosquito hums in one’s ear. The skin prickles, hairs raising. One runs their hands along their arms, moves their legs, rubs the back of their neck to try and keep the bite away, but all it takes is another faint whistle of noise to start the whole cycle over again. And until you kill the fucking thing, you won’t be left in peace.

If he tries to go underground, they’ll find him with suspicions confirmed for trying to flee.

If he stays where he is, and they’ve got more than they let on, he’s fucked anyway.

He doesn’t bother to lock the door to his flat behind him as he comes inside, second cigarette since James’ place between his lips. He grabs his backpack and crams his computer into it, his chargers. A toothbrush and a box of condoms. Odds and ends of clothing until it’s stuffed, and atop he dumps out the remaining packs of Dunhills from their carton before zipping it all shut.

Maybe it’s safer there, still in the city and with a verifiable alibi, but away from his flat if they come ‘round booting down doors.

He stops suddenly, hand against his face to muffle a sound too strangled to be a laugh.

Just like that, a relationship’s become a means to an end.

Again.

Fucking grand.

He lights up another cigarette before he leaves the flat and checks his phone on the stairwell. Nothing new, they’re still waiting for him to get in on IRC and he will, eventually, once he’s back near a network he can use.

At least that much is a relief. Nothing new or they would have sent more info, spoofed a few more numbers to send him instructions or details to track. Danny strides quickly back towards James’ street, to his block, to his building and up the stairs to the door.

It is cracked open as he had said it would be, and Danny just looks at it for a moment before pushing it open with the toe of his boot.

Paranoia. Nothing more. Flickers and flashes of memory - walking into Alex’s flat where the door was similarly unlocked, though left that way by him, walking up the stairs towards the hum of lights in the attic, towards the heater and the trunk and...

He shakes his head, draws a hand through his hair and closes the door behind himself as he enters. The shower is running. The bedroom door is open. There are still dishes in the sink from their breakfast. Fine. Everything is fine.

Everything, if only for the damn shaking in Danny’s fingers that he couldn’t control if he tried. He needs to move. He needs to do something that isn't setting up his computer and falling headfirst into his work. ‘Work.’

He slips his bag from his shoulder and toes off his boots and moves silently through the flat. The blinds are half-down, revealing the city below and beyond, and Danny walks by to look at the bookcases that frame the huge windows. There is a thin film of dust there, enough to suggest that James is not often home to do the general cleaning. The books range from new to very, very old, though they are cared for. Different genres, mystery novels, science fiction, cookery books, travel guides - some thumbed so much their edges fold backwards - dictionaries and encyclopedias. A biography of Margaret Thatcher. A few old magazines tucked in a corner.

Had Danny any analog books, he imagines where they’d go. A shelf of their own, perhaps, and it strikes him as suddenly charming. Reference guides to obscure computer languages, studies of cryptography. They’d need their own shelf because there’s not a place to put them among the rest, all diverse, covering respective genres in two or three books before moving on to the next.

He shakes his head, as if to chase away the hum in his ear.

If he pretended not to know James - and he doesn’t, really - he could discern nothing of him from his books. Those who bother to keep their texts displayed in doing so display something of themselves. James’ shelves remind Danny of those in catalogues, nondescript and average in a way that no human actually lives.

His skin itches.

He slides out the biography and thumbs through it, and tells himself that by finding nothing more offensive within than the subject herself, he’s simply piped his paranoia to the wrong process. The book goes back amongst the others, and he walks past the paintings leant against the wall rather than hung, past the moving boxes yet unpacked.

With a careful fingertip he lifts one corner of an untaped box. Within are folded winter clothes, well-worn sweaters and scarves. Danny sighs relief. If anything, something in this man’s life is real, something has been used and touched and worn, something defines him as more than a figment or a facade.

Danny runs his fingers over the soft wool and then he closes the box again, tiptoeing into the room over, a small study, similarly filled with boxes to be unpacked, pictures resting against the walls. A laptop stands enticingly open with an aurora screensaver on the table facing the window and Danny’s heart goes again, right to his throat and chokes him.

Nothing is ever easy in information gathering. If it was easily gotten, it is either not legitimate or dangerous. Do not trust it. Do not trust anyone. He considers the laptop, he listens to the shower going in the other room, the splashes of water suggesting James is actually in there - _where else would he be?_ \- and steps closer.

Danny doesn’t go to the computer. He goes to the window overlooking the desk where it sits, and as he leans to look on London’s streets, he rests his hand against the camera embedded in the top of the screen. Palm, not fingers, and the sides of his knuckles to wake the screen. No prints against the touchpad. No tidy visual of his face.

Even if the mosquito’s not yet on him, it doesn’t hurt to protect one’s self in the meantime.

There’s a password required, of course, though he’s admittedly a little surprised to see it from a man of James’ age. On a whim, he types _maggie_. Nothing. He wagers another blind and popular guess - _oldtrafford_ \- and no luck there either. A third could risk a security lockout so he doesn’t try, despite the lingering and malignant curiosity that tempts him, and whispers in his ear opposite the hum that once he knows more about the man, he can try again later and do it right.

“Back,” he calls out, to kill-process his own thoughts.

There’s an acknowledging sound from the shower but the water keeps running, and Danny sighs out a long breath before flicking his eyes to the screen again, where the aurora is lighting it up once more. He turns his back to the computer before slipping his hand from the camera.

Paranoid. He’s being bloody paranoid. Overthinking when he should be enjoying having a normal relationship for the first time in fucking years. Maybe he’s just moved in. He could have, Danny’s never asked. Maybe he’s about to move out. He could be, Danny’s never asked. The amount he doesn’t know about this man is incredible, and instead of panicking over the fact that he happens to have a biography of a famous British icon and no pornos on his shelf, he should be asking him about himself. Learning more. Doing it the natural way instead of digging immediately through the man’s social media records and tracking his online footprint.

“Be fucking _normal_ ,” he whispers to himself, before going to fetch his bag and bring it back to the bedroom. Focusing on the sound of the shower as a source of white noise, he contents himself with imagining it cascading along James’ body. He unpacks a cord to charge his phone, on the side of the bed where he slept the night before, and though his fingers brush against his computer, he stops himself from taking it out.

Instead, he works off his socks and leaves them behind, padding on bare feet to the bathroom doorway. Despite the impulse, he doesn’t enter, nor does he look towards the steam-grey mirror he can see inside.

“I brought back a couple things.”

“Anywhere you like,” James tells him, before Danny even has to ask.

“Did you just move in?”

“Couple months ago,” James replies, then the water shuts off and the drips fill the silence between them. Danny hears him step out, hears him slip the towel from the rack and rub it through his hair before he dries his skin. “I’m bloody awful at getting myself motivated enough to unpack. I only use the kitchen and bedroom when I have time off work, haven’t bothered with the rest.”

Danny tries not to curse in surprise when the door pulls open and James stands before him, towel low around his hips and curious smile on his face.

“Too used to living out of boxes,” James adds. “I moved around a lot as a kid.”

To his credit, Danny keeps his eyes up. It is a struggle, and their gaze holds a beat too long, and then another. Danny’s cheeks heat as James’ brow lifts slowly, until the barest movement of his head and a smile in his eyes grants permission. Request. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, he’s already lost the game, and Danny allows his attention to drift appreciatively low and then back up again before stepping back.

He’s going to have a hell of a time getting to know James, period, if he can’t keep his blood in his brain instead of between his legs.

“Military?” Danny asks, biting his lip as he leans to the wall and watches James pass.

“Not at that age,” James teases, and Danny snorts. “My parents traveled, and when they passed, I lived with an aunt who did, too. Back and forth for schooling. It becomes easier to keep very few things, and to have most of them packed.”

“Sorry about your parents,” says Danny, before shaking his head and pushing himself nimbly off the wall.

“It was a long time ago, but thank you.”

Danny settles to the edge of the bed with a bounce, watching James at his closet, though watching James’ back muscles and precariously wrapped towel is perhaps more accurate. “Where were you before this?”

“Before London?”

Danny hums, shifting to lie back on the bed as he watches James dress, ducking his nose into the large hoodie he wears to breathe in the clean-sweat smell of the man.

“I’ve been all over,” James replies, dropping the towel to slip into a pair of grey briefs. “Lived in Paris for a long time. Austria, Germany, Tangier, Tunisia...”

“For security?”

“For the military,” James replies with a smile, turning to watch Danny on the bed as he slips into a button-up and works the buttons expertly without watching. He watches Danny instead.

Danny squints at him from beneath his hood, smile widening. “Are you always so coy?”

“Me?” James blinks, as if affronted. “Never.”

With a laugh so unexpected he snorts, Danny lets his elbows slide from beneath him and curls to his side. One arm tucked beneath his head, he shivers when James straightens a sleeve with a crisp pluck, buttoning his cuffs. “What branch?”

“Royal Navy.”

“A sailor,” purrs Danny, socked toes curling in delight.

“Commander,” James corrects him, and Danny coils a little more before forcing his legs to stretch. He rubs a blushing cheek against his arm, rapt in watching James bend to slide his socks up firm calves.

“Sir yes sir,” he grins.

James’ eyes flick up even as he remains bent, and he regards Danny with a clear look before allowing his eyes to narrow. 

“Don’t tempt me to teach you how to get in line,” he warns him, setting his hands to the bed and bending to kiss Danny chastely on the lips when the other laughs. “Because I will.”

“Are you going out?”

“Not that I know of,” James replies, turning to reach into the closet for a pair of pants. Sliding them on, he makes a show of selecting his belt before he slips it through the loops, deliberate and slow, knowing Danny follows every motion of the thing.

“You’re dressed up.”

“I’m a pompous old-money British cock,” James tells him, moving to bend to Danny again. He noses against him and slips a hand down to press to Danny’s bare chest beneath James’ hoodie. “Of course I’m over-dressed for working from home.”

“You’re a bloody dream,” Danny reassures him, arching upward to feel James push back against him. “And you’re only making things harder for both of us by putting clothes on at all.”

“Normally things get harder when the clothes are off.”

“I take it back. You’re a cock,” laughs Danny, bringing a hand to James’ cheek as he’s kissed again and again, little touches of lips but each one raising the tempo of his heart. He makes a fussy sound when James starts to pull away, stopping only when an arched brow conveys the same _hush_ that speaks straight to Danny’s dick. “What sort of work does someone in security do from home? On a -”

“Saturday.”

“On a Saturday?”

“There’s no way to make it sound even remotely interesting,” James sighs. “Calling in reports. Writing reports.”

_What sort of reports? Reports on what? On whom? What kind of security work entails paperwork so important it has to be filed on the weekend?_

Danny bites his lip, given a curious look, and through the hum in his ears simply shakes his head. “You’re right,” he agrees. “That’s not at all interesting. So uninteresting, in fact,” he says, working himself in clumsy wriggles from under James’ hand, and nearly off the side of the bed. “That in the interest of getting to the part where we shag again, sooner, I think I’ll go do my own uninteresting work, headphones on, and leave you to it.”

James hums, and lets Danny go, straightening his shoulders as he stands again. Danny bends near in half to reach for his laptop and pull it free, smiling as he notices James studying the stickers on the cover. He looks up and raises an eyebrow, and the older man allows a flicker of his lip in genuine amusement before sketching a bow and passing Danny on his way to the study.

“Perhaps we can do lunch?”

“Perhaps,” Danny replies, amused.

“I shall pick you up in a few hours then,” James tells him, and Danny snorts, imagining that this particular offer will be quite literal, given their proximity.

“Looking forward to it.”

James says nothing, just smiles and lets his hand rest on the doorjamb a moment more before leaving Danny be. With his laptop and headphones and several hours to sort this mess out. He’s just got the computer open when James returns, apology on his lips as he hands Danny a slip of paper with the server name and log in.

 _James07_ , Danny reads, pursing his lips so as not to laugh at the password. _MaggieMcG33_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Do you always go for men twice your age?” James asks him after a while, and Danny laughs, triumphant._
> 
> _“I bloody well try,” Danny grins._

_/JOIN #KaliRiverSoc  
*** Now talking in #KaliRiverSoc  
*** goonch has joined channel #KaliRiverSoc_

_[ goonch ] hey  
[ xxxxx ] sup  
[ xxxxx ] took you long enough  
[ goonch ] some of us leave our apts once in a while  
[ xxxxx ] Some of us aren’t being stalked by fucking Lestrade.  
[ goonch ] MBN_

Danny’s music warbles deep watery bass against his ears, more isolated still by James’ hoodie over his headphones. Shoulders slumped against the headboard, computer warming his thighs, he spent a good half-hour probing James’ network’s security for any liabilities or points of interest. He found neither, the system surprisingly shuttered. He’s not proud that he looked for a backdoor into James’ computer. He’s relieved he didn’t find one.

If the man works for a security firm, it stands to reason they’d outfit him with a tight connection, regardless of Danny’s own assumptions about his age.

_[ xxxxx ] good news bad news  
[ goonch ] uggghhhhh  
[ xxxxx ] bad news is they’re keeping it open and rollin in more forces  
[ goonch ] good news is that means they don’t have anything  
[ xxxxx ] Or they’re looking for a bigger bust.  
[ goonch ] I’ve not seen anyone in days  
[ goonch ] no calls  
[ goonch ] no questioning  
[ goonch ] nothing  
[ xxxxx ] bait’s been set jic  
[ xxxxx ] hopefully something biets  
[ xxxxx ] bites*  
[ goonch ] anything else I should be doing  
[ xxxxx ] We’ve got sniffers out but nothing yet.  
[ xxxxx ] Seems like it might be best to just everyone lay low otherwise.  
[ goonch ] touch too many times and you’ll get your hand slapped  
[ xxxxx ] lol_

Danny clicks out into a new browser and searches through the RSS feeds of any major news site that would cover Alex’s death. No new information, still no names, still no details. He sees the inquest verdict and the official statement that the case is not yet closed, and that the police are following new leads. Then he switches to the modern day yellow press of social media, populated perpetually by the opinions of speculators and conspiracy theorists.

_@DTDK818 it was a fucking kink dungeon man you should see the photos_

Danny follows the link. There are photos. They certainly show what is suggested. They aren’t from Alex’s apartment. He swallows and skims through for a few more.

_@bananus don’t mess with MI6, man, whole fckin government is watching us enough already. Bet one of them did it to fuck us up._

_@bananus @cedar6 least someone’s trying to wipe the slate clean. Why would MI6 off their own anyway?_

_@eltonDD it’s all a fucking mess. Who said it was MI6? Go big or go home, @cedar6, accuse everyone_

_@bananus @eltonDD it’s all over the chatter if you know where to look_

Danny looks. Nothing but speculation. No official statement of MI6 involvement, nothing at all to suggest that Alex was affiliated with them or working for them. It makes him dizzy. Danny rubs his eyes hard enough that he sees stars. They dance to the bass beat of some remixed Moloko song pulsing through his headphones. He should have taken a hit before coming back.

He tabs back into the IRC and waits for his eyesight to restore itself as the chat scrolls by.

_[ xxxxx ] they kept the fuckin default pw like  
[ xxxxx ] how stupid are you  
[ xxxxx ] Hey Goonch.  
[ goonch ] ?  
[ xxxxx ] Where you pinging from?_

Danny blinks, shaking his head. He holds his breath for the split second it takes him to check that he’s connected through Society’s VPN, and clicks back.

_[ goonch ] our vpn why  
[ xxxxx ] New IP?_

Fuck. It should be hidden, not just for him but for all of them. That’s the whole bloody point of a private network, to be private, isn’t it? All they’ll know is he’s in London, which they know already, but his shoulders hunch as he leans forward, legs crossed, bent over his computer.

_[ goonch ] girded up at the library  
[ goonch ] should be anon though  
[ goonch ] if the network’s working right  
[ xxxxx ] ¯\\_ (ツ) _/¯_

“You absolute fucking assholes,” breathes Danny, eyes wide. Of course they’d fucking backdoor him. Why not, considering the nature of what they’ve asked him to do? It would be out of character entirely for anyone in Society to take someone’s word at face value, laughable even.

_[ xxxxx ] who watches the watchmen amirite_

Danny’s hands don’t move but his thoughts fly. If they’ve stuck him with a keystroke logger or remote monitoring, the last thing he should do is start frantically skimming back over his history, so he thinks through it instead. He bought drugs in darknet markets. Scanned the news. Social media. Forums. He looked up the restaurant he went to with James. Nothing worse than that.

He could laugh for it, if his chest weren’t collapsing inward with panic. What the fuck is he afraid of?

They already know the worst thing he’s done. They’re the ones who made it happen.

_[ goonch ] hope you enjoy all the porn  
[ xxxxx ] pretty gay tbh_

Danny glances up at the sticky tac that he has pressed over the camera of his computer, to reassure himself that it hasn’t slipped, that that part of his life remains anonymous still. There are ways, of course, he could be tracked through the security feeds on cameras around the library, the cafes he frequents, his own apartment building. Using the evils of a corporate world to help sow seeds for the greater good.

He finds himself frowning, and turns the music up until it almost hurts. Slipping further down on the bed, his bare toes flex from beneath the hem of too-long jeans.

He’s sure he’s been hacked before - it’s clear the Society makes it a habit of doing it to the rest of the world, what makes its own members an exception? Danny knows of people trying to infiltrate the network, knows the reason for the obsessive need to watch and check and crawl through everyone’s shitpile at one point or another. He’s done it enough times himself. He checks the time.

The chat goes on without him and he’s fine with that. The letters blur to stripes of black and white and he lets his eyes close until it all fuzzes grey. So they’re watching him. So what. Watching him watch porn or sit idling for hours as the internet at large clicks by before him. Watching what substances he picks up from the agora. He’s not working for anyone else. He’s not an informant. There should be nothing to hide.

With a laugh of realization, music drowning in his ears, he splays a hand across his face. It doesn’t bother him objectively that they’re monitoring him. It bothers him because he thought of them as friends. Nameless, faceless, familiar only via patterns of speech and behavior conveyed through manifold labyrinthine means, and still the nearest thing in his life to friends.

How pathetic.

He leaves the IRC running, eventually curling to his side and chiming in with the periodic _lol_ just to convey that he doesn’t mind and he’s not bothered and everything’s fine. To react poorly, or at all, would open him up to all manner of hell both personal and IRL. If the group doesn’t care, then he doesn’t either.

After all, they’re all one in the same, aren’t they?

Danny doesn’t remember falling asleep, but James’ hand against his shoulder gently wakes him. He blinks, bleary-eyed at the last timestamps on his screen.

_*** goonch has quit (idle 180s)  
*** goonch has left channel #KaliRiverSoc_

Whatever James says is lost beneath the oil-thick slurry of Zomby and Danny makes a sound as he tugs his headphones free.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, dragging himself upward. “Didn’t catch that.”

James watches him, expression soft, something beneath his eyes that tugs at a familiar weariness that Danny knows all too well. He brings a hand to his face to rub the sleep from his eyes as James repeats what he said, voice soft, almost pulsing after the massive assault on his eardrums that Danny had kept up for the hours he worked.

“I’ve come to pick you up for lunch,” James smiles. “If you would like to join me. We can, however, postpone for a dinner instead.”

Danny shakes his head without reservation, smiling as he sweeps the hair back from his eyes. “Famished,” he says, tilting his cheek against James’ palm when he reaches to tuck a curl behind his ear. “Where are we going?”

“Anywhere you’d like,” James says. “Anything you’re in the mood for.”

“Chicken biryani,” he murmurs, grinning when James laughs. “But…”

“But?”

“But that’s a long ways off if you’re going to pick me up.”

James smiles, setting his fingers to the top of the computer and, at Danny’s nod, he gently closes it with a click. He leans over it to kiss against the corner of Danny’s mouth, and his smile spreads warm across his cheeks, chasing the blush that comes up from the feeling.

“Or I could be a terribly lazy gentleman and ask it to be delivered,” he murmurs, drawing his hand through Danny’s hair until the younger man laughs and presses a yawn into his palm again. James kisses his forehead, and then with a welcome yet still surprising show of strength, he leans to slip his arms beneath Danny’s body and hoist him up against his chest. He laughs when Danny clings to him from the sheer strangeness of being _lifted_ so damn effortlessly, and smiles with just his eyes when the young man turns to him with a grin.

“So what was the point of picking me up?”

“So I could have an excuse to do it?” James offers.

The sound Danny makes is sleepy and childish and a little embarrassing, pure drowsy delight as he nuzzles against James’ neck and wraps his arms over his shoulders. His kisses trace up steady pulse and stiff stubble, sighing when it catches rough against his lips.

“Going to hold me until the food gets here?” Danny murmurs, grinning when his whisper into James’ ear makes the older man shiver and hold him tighter.

“It’ll be hard to call it in like this.”

“I’ll call if it means you’ll keep holding me.”

“Deal.”

“What if they’re busy?”

“What if, indeed.”

“It might take a long time.”

“It might.”

“And you’ll keep holding me?”

“For as long as I can,” James promises, glancing to Danny who kisses the corner of his mouth in response. They go together, just so, Danny’s feet hooked together and legs dangling over James’ arm, his kisses ceaseless over whatever part of James’ cheek or neck or ear he can reach. He feels weightless. He is weightless. The world asks nothing more of him right now than to let James hold him, and Danny could cry with relief.

He doesn’t.

He kisses him again instead, and laughs when James pivots them so that Danny can grasp the phone and place their order.

He orders enough that he knows there will be leftovers for an inordinately late dinner. He orders with a laugh and puts James’ name as the reference. He holds the phone in loose fingers after, as he leans in to kiss James deeply, savoring the taste of cold coffee from his tongue. 

“They might take a while,” Danny warns him.

“Then I suppose we shall wait a while,” James replies with a grin. “Tell me about your day.”

Danny tilts his head, following the curves of James’ face with his gaze. The wrinkles fanned beside his eyes, the steep lines that shadow from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Pale blue eyes like cloudless winter sky. Danny leans to kiss him, holding it long enough that he can feel his heart begin to speed before finally parting just enough to breathe again.

“Checked in with work,” he says.

True.

“Pissed about on Twitter.”

True.

“Chatted with some friends.”

Almost true.

“Then you found me as I ended up,” Danny reminds him, framing James’ cheek with his hand as he nuzzles the other cheek in turn. He makes a little, pleased sound as James shifts his weight enough to adjust, watching him with a burgeoning sensation of wonder. A Royal Navy commander who works in a security firm, at his age. Fitter than most men half his age - Danny included - and putting on none of the peacocking that Danny’s come to expect from men who take such exceptional care of themselves.

Gentle and warm and open in his affections.

And sad, as he said once, and as Danny sees now in the undercurrent of his smile.

“Tell me about your day,” Danny asks, his small smile strengthening. “I missed you.”

“What a marvelous coincidence,” James murmurs, allowing Danny to touch him as he pleases, holding his weight easily as they stand in the middle of the living room, for no other reason than because James said he would, and Danny wants to be. “Checked in with work,” he lists, turning to kiss against Danny’s hand where it cups his cheek. “Filed a few overdue reports. Was debriefed on a new assignment starting this week. Drank coffee. Thought of you.”

“New assignment,” Danny grins. “Sounds exciting.”

“They call it work for a reason,” answers James, and Danny sighs a laugh. “If they didn’t pay you to be there, you wouldn’t be.”

“Do you have to go somewhere?” Danny asks, wriggling a little not only to make himself more comfortable across James’ arms, but to feel them tighten beneath his legs and against his back. He feels so small, so slight. He feels his age or younger than, vulnerable now that this sense of safety surrounds him.

“No, this one is domestic,” James replies, adjusting his hold around Danny’s shoulders before he winks and lets go of his legs, laughing when Danny immediately scrambles to curl them around James’ hips to hold securely on. “That’s better.”

“How did you know I wouldn’t let go?” Danny laughs, pressing closer now that he’s more comfortable to do so.

“Because you asked me to hold you,” James points out, eyes narrowing before he leans in to kiss Danny softly. “And I said I would.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearing six, I think.”

“Very late lunch, then,” Danny snorts, and James grins.

“We were both delayed by very welcome distractions this morning,” he reminds him.

Danny feels the shift, not only in the position of their bodies but in the conversation. Work is boring to discuss, especially since neither of them seem willing to actually go into detail. Danny can’t and he imagines that James finds his job too boring to discuss. Why push it then, when he can instead welcome the firmness of James’ flat, hard belly against his cock and James’ hands against his ass?

“You are that,” Danny sighs, “constantly.”

“It was your mouth that woke me this morning,” James reminds him, and Danny grins against his mouth.

“Are you complaining?”

“Perhaps I am suggesting,” James replies, smiling just as Danny does to chase his lips with his own, both parted now and sharing breath, neither sinking in for a kiss. They tease a moment more before James gently presses the tip of his tongue to Danny’s top lip and Danny sucks against it.

James sways for a moment, changing position with one step then another, and holds Danny comfortably around the base of his back. “You don’t work Sundays do you?” He asks quietly when Danny relents and lets him breathe. “It would be bloody dreadful if you worked Sundays.”

“Did you have something planned?”

“To eat out, perhaps,” James replies, brows rising just enough for Danny to snort. “There’s a lovely coffee shop on the corner. Did your mind go to the gutter? Terrible boy.”

“Absolutely,” whispers Danny, leaning back from the kiss that James pursues, grinning as he forces James to extend his arms to hold him upright. He locks his fingers at the back of James’ neck and holds fast, heels hooked, secure and precarious all at once.

“What on Earth could you imagine I meant?” James muses, eyes narrowing in a smile.

“You were young once,” Danny teases. His brow arches in a mirror to James’ own expression. “You know how it feels to hear innuendo in every turn of phrase. To hunt for it, in particular, from those you desire. Seeking through every byte of information for confirmation that your desires can and may be met. Innocently spoken words suddenly spiralling down between your legs until you’re bloody dizzy with it.”

James’ eyes widen, and his lips part.

“You remember what it was like,” Danny says with a grin, and he pulls himself suddenly closer, sighing against James’ ear and running a hand through his hair. “And I remember how good your tongue felt inside my ass last night.”

James groans, then, a slow and low sound as he straightens his back and holds Danny close against him. He can feel the stirring interest between James’ legs, and encourages it with a seemingly necessary movement to get a more comfortable hold against him.

“I’ve always enjoyed eating my dinner somewhat cold,” James says after a while, and Danny licks his lips.

“This is lunch,” he reminds him.

“Lunch even more so.”

“Do you suggest we leave them waiting by the door? How rude.”

“Oh, hardly that,” James corrects him, turning on the spot and walking them a little closer to the corridor where he can lean his shoulders against the wall with a sigh, supporting them both. “We will welcome them at the door, give them a fine tip, then toss the boxes to the kitchen counters and you to bed.”

Danny hums, bending his back deeply enough to lift his hips away from James, and then relaxing them - firmly - back together again.

“I’ve already had a nap today,” he says, before raising a brow. “Beg pardon. Was your mind in the gutter? Dirty old man.”

“Absolutely,” James replies, leaning back against the wall and letting Danny seek a kiss for himself. They hold this way for moments more, comfortable in their embrace, and part only when the buzzer goes for the door. “A moment, if you will.”

“You won’t set me down, will you?”

“Shall I hold you as you take our order, then?” James asks him, purring warmth against his ear. “Have them wonder at the wonderful terrible things we must do together, if I carry you around so?”

Danny’s pulse quickens at the challenge, a part of him always eager to buck authority and bugger propriety. The buzzer rings again and he curls his fingers in James’ hair, nails scratching across his scalp. With a vocal little sigh and a brush of their lips together, he asks only, “You’re not embarrassed of me, are you?”

James’ gaze narrows and he shoves himself off the wall. He mashes the entry button with his thumb, and unlocks the door beside them. Laughing, Danny clings to him with arms secure around his neck, turned this way and that, clutching tighter when James reaches back for his billfold and - in a remarkable show of dexterity - frees a few notes from it before opening the door.

“Evening,” James smiles, and the boy who holds their order just blinks at the two of them with unabashed surprise. “The orders haven’t been knocking you off your feet, have they?”

The boy blinks again and Danny bites the inside of his lip so as not to grin too wide. He holds tighter against James’ neck and leans to press his forehead against James’ temple, watching the delivery boy as the boy watches him. He can’t be older than seventeen, working after school to make enough for whatever the hell kids ache for these days. He seems too shocked to do anything but look, and apologizes profusely when James clears his throat and holds the money out to him.

“Sorry, sir, I’ll see if I have change, I -”

“No need,” James smiles again, turning to Danny so the other reaches to take their order from limp hands. “Thank you very much.”

The young man nods, shakes his head, nods again and fumbles with the bills as he stumbles over his own feet to the stairs again. James watches him until he disappears and then turns to Danny, still in his arms, heavy and lovely and blushing so beautifully.

Danny lifts the bag and his brow all at once.

“Counter,” James tells him, and Danny stretches back, his relatively short form made long and - he hopes - elegant by the maneuver. James’ hands support his back, and the hand he keeps against James’ especially muscular, especially broad shoulder helps to keep him from toppling to the floor. The bag crinkles as it’s laid to rest, and Danny laughs as he’s snatched back from his stretch.

James has held him, without complaint or weakening, since he hoisted Danny from the bed. Not once, not once has James let him go. He promised he wouldn’t.

And for all Danny’s seen and done, promises matter.

Their mouths meet roughly, as much demanding need as shoved them together the night before with no mind for anything but the other. James bites against Danny’s bottom lip. Danny sucks James’ tongue when it seeks purchase in his mouth. James’ teeth seek his jaw, his throat, his collarbone bare beneath James’ own hoodie as James carries Danny stumbling back to the bedroom and Danny laughs, helpless.

“Dirty old man,” he gasps.

“Terrible boy,” James growls in response.

“D’you always go after men half your age?”

“How old are you?” James asks, stopped beside the bed.

“Twenty-three. You?”

“Hush.”

Danny’s pitched to the bed, bouncing once before scrambling to move his laptop aside. 

James follows only when Danny’s settled again, content to pin him with his body to the warm mattress beneath. He hardly needs his hands, though he uses them, to catch Danny’s wrists gently and hold them at his sides as he continues to seek against Danny’s jaw.

“Do you always go for men twice your age?” James asks him after a while, and Danny laughs, triumphant.

“I bloody well try,” Danny grins. Heels slipping against the bedcover, he bends his hips up to confirm their throbbing need in the contact of their cocks. James grasps his hip and presses him down again, pushing a moan from Danny in response.

“Why? When you could have any number of bright young things…”

The words snare unpleasantly when James speaks them and before he can finish, Danny shakes his head. He doesn’t want that again, the ferocity of youthful ardor so bright that it immolates. He wants grounding and steady movement, not explosion.

“The way your hands feel,” Danny says, shivering upward until their chests meet when James runs his palm against his ribs. “Firm and familiar with work, unflinching. The way in which you move me how I should be, rather than leaving me to fumble about and rut blindly. You know what you want. You know how to make someone feel good. Skill and experience,” he whispers, eyes hooded. “And knowing that for all of that, you want _me_.”

James smiles, gentle in that, and slips his hands beneath his hoodie to touch against Danny’s skin, just cool enough to be comfortable, just warm enough to make him shiver when James’ fingers press.

“I want you,” he tells him, voice soft and quiet as he ducks his head to kiss against the soft bare stomach his hands reveal, pushing the hoodie up.

How could that be anything less than intoxicating? It’s euphoric, a rush of pleasure greater than any pill or powder, to hear a man so certain in his world declare that the other is desirable and worthy and wanted. Danny’s belly clenches in waves that pulse from heart to cock, sped by the sweep of warm lips against his skin and the rough scrape of unshaven scruff. He runs his hands through sandy blond hair and lets a sigh carry his voice into a moan.

“Have me, then,” Danny whispers.

He lifts his arms with a laugh when James’ hands push the sweater up to his chin, and his kisses follow suit. All across his pale skin and hairless chest, over his heart and heaving ribs. He tenses in anticipation as James hovers over a pert, pebbled little nipple. Danny lowers his eyes - keeping them just open enough to see - and watches.

James’ tongue teases a languid, tickling circle and even that tender touch is enough that Danny’s hips buck hard up against the hard plane of James’ stomach.

With a gentle hush, James does it again. He doesn’t hold Danny down - he just rests his hands against his sides, beneath the rumpled fabric of the hoodie. Danny still shivers with the command of it. With every breath and every lick, teasing over the few fine hairs that grow there, warming and cooling that little ring of dark and sensitive skin in equal measure, Danny grows harder from no more than James teasing him. After a particularly deliberate squirm, James sits up just enough to pull the hoodie all the way off and leave Danny bare above the waist.

Danny yelps in surprise when James nips him lightly, and presses his fingers between his teeth and eyes weighing closed in pleasure. James’ lips wrap hot against him and suck, tongue toying with the tender skin in his mouth. Finally, when Danny’s bloody well shaking from it, James pulls back and lets Danny breathe. James looks up the length of his body, taking in every trembling inch, nosing against his throat where his pulse pours hot and swift as magma under his skin. He sets his legs on either side of Danny’s, and with a narrow-eyed smile, ducks his head to return to his deliberate worship of the young body before him.

Danny need do no more than revel in it. He isn't sure he could do more, even if he felt moved to do so. Work-weathered hands gently grasp Danny's narrow waist as James kisses a line down the center of his chest. His belly rises and falls, faster and faster, tickled into gasping laughter by James' scruff and eased by his mouth, lips slipping warm over his stomach. Danny's not fit like James, his masculine form honed to damn near perfection. Danny's just naturally skinny, slighter than he'd like to be in height and figure both.

James hardly seems to mind. Kissing Danny's soft stomach, he hooks his fingertips against his trousers and tugs them low without bother to unbutton or unzip. He mouths, moaning low, down the dark trail of hair that thickens as it goes. Danny's pants and trousers both slip down the sharp points of his hips, revealing the dense thicket of hair at the base of Danny's cock.

Arching upward to seek a kiss that James resists, Danny meets his gaze and grins. His whole body is too warm; heat paints scarlet his cheeks. He wriggles a little, James' hands firming against his hips. He tries to bend to get his cock free and fails, laughing as he drapes an arm across his eyes.

He feels young and small and silly.

He feels safe and protected and worthy.

"Just going to look at it?" Danny snorts, eyes opening again as James hums an affirmative. "No, don’t just - don't just stare," he says with a laugh. “No.”

James leans in to gently bite against the tuft of hair before nosing at it. He doesn’t move to remove Danny's pants, he doesn't stroke or nuzzle or touch his cock that throbs through the fabric. Danny has never been treated like this before. It's novel. Addictive.

He manages to draw up his knees and spread them, bare toes pushing to the sheets as James continues to just take him in. Danny's surprised that something so unintrusive can make him feel so beautifully vulnerable, yet every touch sends sparks through him, every breath makes him shiver, and when James finally undoes his button and slowly draws down the zipper, Danny grabs the pillow on either side of his head and clutches it.

It's the little things, it's always the little things. James’ breath stirring Danny’s coarse pubic curls, the way his fingers tickle just enough as they skim skin. The little sound he makes of utter intoxicated delight when he breathes Danny in.

“You are an addiction,” James whispers, mouthing at Danny's cock through the thin cotton of his boxers. “Can't get enough of you.”

Danny's jaw slackens when James spreads his mouth and the thin material snares against his damp bottom lip. Pressure, heat, the movement of James' breath - all of that, Danny can feel acutely through every sparking nerve in his body. Only a thin barrier prevents direct contact, and as James' tongue soaks damp spit against Danny's pants, his cock leaks in response.

The headboard clicks against the wall as Danny reaches for that instead of the pillow, whipcord thin arms pulled taut as he holds on and bends. His cock raises, jerking stiffer, seeking the hot tunnel of James' mouth.

"I thought I was a dreadful boy," Danny whispers, grinning when James raises his eyes.

"Terrible," he corrects with a subtle smile. He's bloody beautiful, refined and dignified and made somehow depraved by that when laid alongside his eagerness to engage in debauchery. Danny's attention shifts to the movement of James' shoulders beneath his neatly pressed shirt, as James murmurs against his pubic hair, "You're that, too."

Danny's throat clicks, swallowing painfully hard as James' tongue caresses the damp spot on his pants, leaked hot from his cock.

"Look at you," James murmurs, kissing the curve of Danny's cockhead, laid flushed and full against his hip. "Naughty little thing."

"Oh fuck," moans Danny, belly rippling tight as he digs furrows into the sheets with his heels. His cheeks scald with embarrassment for such an uncontrolled, visceral reaction, but even his attempt to contain his voice - bottom lip between his teeth - fails when his cock tents his boxers even more.

James notes the effect the words have on him, smiles against his skin but doesn’t tease again. Instead, he takes the head of Danny’s cock between his lips and sucks. Slow, deliberate tugs of pressing lips and hot tongue. He doesn’t need to use his hands to take more of Danny into his mouth, he merely shifts the fabric of his underwear lower and lower until it rests against the base of his cock and James has him sucked fully against his tongue.

Danny shakes - he can’t help it. The teasing, the words, the fucking _worship_ this man lays upon him is damn near too much.

“You’re gonna make me come,” Danny tells him, and James’ eyes flick up and narrow in mischievous pleasure. He knows. He knows, and he will, and both of them will love it. Danny’s fingers curl harder around the headboard and he lifts one leg to set it over James’ shoulder, then the other, wrapping him close with his feet crossed at the ankle, tugging and urging James closer with every arch of his hips.

Danny doesn't need to thrust - James is capably tugging him off in steady strokes of pressure with his mouth alone. But he does anyway, heels pressing to James' back, hips lifting from the bed, just to feel the way James allows it. Watching through a heavy hooded gaze, he softly fucks against the rolling muscle of James' tongue against his shaft, pushing past thin lips that bend inward and then pull flushed and reddened outward again.

"You like it too," Danny whispers, voice roughened as if he'd smoked a whole pack of cigarettes, made harsh by the same pleasure that stiffens his body and works moans into every breath. "Pretty young thing losing his bloody mind in your bed. Knowing you'll have to work to wear me out and knowing damn well that you can."

James makes a low sound that resonates, vibrating through Danny's cock so deeply that he bends backward from it. Shoulders against the pillow, neck craned, his chest arches towards the ceiling, heart knocking against his ribs. He's not allowed to lower, the press of James' tongue against the slit of his cock curving his body higher still, until he's all but on his head, bridged from James' shoulders to the bed. James' slick mouth consumes him again, dripping spit down his shaft to darken blacker the curls of hair between his legs. A thread runs along his balls and Danny's cock jerks, belly tight.

"Fuck," Danny moans, voice pitching high and needy. "Fuck, James - please -"

Gentle hands set to Danny’s ass, just squeezing the skin there, kneading the muscle. It’s permission enough, challenge enough, and when he’s spread with James’ roughened thumbs, Danny comes hard enough to see white. He can feel James swallowing around him, taking in every drop as though it were the sweetest liqueur. When he finally has the mental capacity to open his eyes and look, James’ are closed, and as he pulls back a strand of pearlescent come snaps against his bottom lip.

“Holy shit,” Danny whispers as he’s lowered to the bed, half-clothed and lax and trembling. James watches him, his own breath hitching as he catches it, pushing cool against Danny’s flushed skin. “Come here.”

James goes, crawling slowly up Danny’s body until he’s snared close by arms and legs and held against the younger man in his bed. James laughs, just a soft thing, and turns his head against Danny’s throat on a nuzzle that is almost childish, seeking comfort as Danny had, earlier, when he was carried. For a moment they just lie together, and then James hums and presses a kiss to Danny’s cheek, lingering and long, drawing his nose over the spot immediately after.

Danny squirms, so sensitive he’s almost ticklish. Twisting to his side, cock leaking a last drop down his hip, he gathers James’ face in his hands and kisses him deeply. With only passing shame, Danny knows the taste of himself. With outright delight, he runs his tongue across James’ own to savor it from his mouth. He doesn’t hold the kiss long, allowing James to catch his breath between their reddened lips, and lowering his hand between their bodies, ignores the mild protest James hums forth.

Slender fingers curve around the hard ridge of James’ cock, palming his length in steady strokes through his trousers. He watches James’ pleasure soften across his features, wrinkles smoothing, eyes drifting closed as his lips part. He’s beautiful, gruff and weathered and stern. Danny can see him as a soldier. He can see him as the manager of whatever firm he works for.

He can see himself waking up to him the next morning, and the one after, and the one after that. Nevermind the age difference, the contrasts in their life experiences. Nevermind the wounds they still keep covered from each other, admitted to but not yet shown. Danny doesn’t want to play pretend this time.

He wants to play for keeps.

“Let me ride you?” Danny asks, gaze lifting upward and hand curling tighter.

James shivers, a beautiful full body thing, and laughs against Danny’s collarbone. He shakes his head, nods it, lifts his chin to smear their lips together again as he holds himself up over Danny and rocks into his hand.

“Please,” he breathes.

Danny’s always hated the fact that he falls in love as simply as one trips over a shoelace in the street. It happens and then he’s gone, in that uncontrollable freefall of delight and newness and adoration. He never loves by halves. He doesn’t think he could if he tried. Naive, perhaps. Childish, most likely. A dreamer and a lover, always.

He always hits ground, eventually. It always hurts and it always leaves scars, wounds that take time to heal.

Never once has that stopped him from diving in again.

He shifts, now, to roll James onto his back and to straddle him. With a laugh, he works off his pants and lets them fall to the floor with his jeans. Only then does he set about undressing James in the same slow, worshipful way that James had undressed him.

Unlike the other times they've shagged - already remarkably high in number for so little time together - Danny does not rush. He hardly needs to when he's been sated, cock flaccid and drying between his legs. He savors instead in being allowed to take his time, every button of James' shirt a revelation of tanned skin and fine curls. Every breath James takes moves Danny atop him.

He's all too aware of James' arousal, too, thickening harder still as he's bared inch by adoring inch. It prods against the inside of Danny's thigh, twitching now and then, and he grins.

"Dirty old man," he murmurs, delighted.

“Wanton boy,” James replies, just as pleased. He arches when Danny reaches his belt, holding himself up on his shoulders and heels as Danny pulls it free and tosses it aside. He rests his back to the bed for just a moment before Danny rubs the heel of his hand deliberately and slowly against his cock, working him harder in kneading presses. His smile spreads, he ducks his head and lets his curls fall messy over his brow.

Elegant fingers work the button and zipper, smiling when James arches again for his trousers to be slid down his legs. Danny delights in leaving his socks on, grinning wickedly when James raises an eyebrow at him. He bends to kiss him, curved over James like a little fae creature, determined to keep him, devour and protect him. James’ rough hands against his slight shoulders make Danny shiver in pleasure. He likes feeling little against someone. He likes feeling slight and young and protected without being told and shown and made, over and over, to be something, not someone.

James does not patronize. He does not put Danny down. He does not discount him, not a single aspect of him.

“You’re going to make me come,” James murmurs with a smile.

“I should hope so,” Danny says, feigned affront giving way to a grin. His other hand joins the first, palms flat against James’ cock, sitting against his hands to push down firm and rock with his hips. Every forward thrust down against the older man works a soft sound from him, not a moan but closer to a grunt. Primal. Masculine. Absolutely fucking dizzying.

“Pants,” James asks, licking his lips apart. Danny rises onto his knees with a winsome toss of his hair and when he rocks back down, he slides his hands into James’ briefs, fingertips tracing the shaft of his cock. James curses this time, and Danny laughs.

He doesn’t tease him more. He knows he’s close. He tugs down James’ pants and slides down over his legs, nearly toppling from the edge of the bed as he does. James starts to move to catch him, so fast that Danny blinks a little, before he just smiles and turns onto his belly to rummage through his backpack for the rubbers he brought.

James arches up to catch against Danny’s shoulders when he sits back up again, laughing as his hair gets into his eyes and he uses one hand to push it back. He tears the foil with his teeth and takes out the condom with careful fingers. Lifting his eyes to James’, he sets it to the tip of his cock and watches him the entire time he rolls it down, and when it’s past the head, he bends to set his lips to it. Slowly, deliberately, he swallows James down as he rolls the condom to the base of his cock, moaning as he pulls off again.

He can do this, Danny thinks, shifting forward on his knees, relishing the way James skims his palms over his thighs and down again, hooking fingers behind his knees as Danny arches up. He slips a hand behind himself and guides James back against him, teasing the head over and over his hole until they’re both breathless, brows together and eyes closed.

He can do this, playing for keeps. He can play and win. He can wake up next to James and fall asleep beside him. He can make this work around IRL and the Society, he can make this work because he fucking wants it to. He wants this relationship to be something that grows, something he can work on to nurture and keep.

He wants it, he needs it for himself.

He’s too tired, at twenty-three, to allow his heart to be squeezed and torn and shoved roughly back together again and again. He needs grounding. He needs James. He wants him.

His voice cracks a little as he starts to sink back onto James’ cock, fingers curling against James’ chest and leaving thin white marks that fade to pink. James’ teeth clench in a quiet hiss. Danny takes him deeper with little twitches back upward to tease, to play, to give his own body time to adjust to the older man’s girth stretching him wide. He holds, hands shaking until he presses them flat, when James’ cockhead puts pressure on his prostate. Even spent, cock hanging limp and little against his balls, the sensation plucks his belly tighter.

“You’re so bloody big,” Danny whispers, laughing when he realizes he sounds like a porno, sighing when it turns him on anyway. James’ stomach clenches in a wave of pleasure beneath his hands and Danny spreads his palms flat, rubbing upward over the ridges of his abs and across his chest. Fingers fanning to stroke his nipples, he watches from beneath his messy hair as James’ lips loosen and his brow creases.

Only when he’s taken James inside him so deep that pubic hair tickles his bum does Danny breathe again, and James too, both laughing shaky with relief. It’s as though they were meant to be whole like this, only complete when one has filled the other. Let Society judge him by his superficial patterns, Danny thinks. They’ll never understand what truly moves him.

No machine can read a human being, not entirely. Truths and half-truths, split-second decisions, moral judgement - all these things are foreign to a machine. It cannot be taught that, it should be innate knowledge. Danny sits back to feel James deeper and moans, dropping his head back, letting his throat work as he swallows, as he sets his hands to taut muscled belly and pushes up on his knees before sinking down again.

No coding could make pleasure palpable.

No hacker could break into a mind, not entirely.

Danny works himself against James’ cock like he wants to be nowhere else, and in truth, right then, he doesn’t. He wants to be just there, rocking against James, feeling him twitch and shift, watching him arch back, catching his hands as he seeks over Danny’s body to touch, and remember, and pleasure him again, too. But for his hands and the swift flutter of breath moving within, an occasional push upward to reach just a little bit deeper, James is all but motionless. Danny moves for him instead, rounding his back and curling his hips. Clenching his muscles and easing them in time with his own drowsy pleasure.

He has short legs and a long torso. Skinny arms and wide shoulders. His chest is all but hairless but beneath his waist, the opposite is true. He’s passably cute, but nothing special. No, Danny has never felt particularly beautiful, broken down to the sum of his parts, but when James’ hands hold him together and his eyes flash upward as Danny arches deep and moans, he feels extraordinary.

“Faster,” James asks him, hands on Danny’s hips.

“Yes,” gasps Danny, leaning forward across him to kiss him soundly and grasp James’ strong, shivering shoulder muscles. “Like this?”

“More.”

“Fuck,” Danny moans, as he snaps his hips in quick jerks, little thrusts filling him, stretching him open, pressing his breath until it’s little more than whimpered panting against James’ mouth. “Like -”

“Like that.”

“Like this.”

“Yes,” James gasps.

His hands clamp hard against Danny’s waist and his eyes roll closed. He pushes him down and his cock swells thick and twitching, and Danny grins as he squeezes hard and moans. James shifts a leg up against Danny’s, just pressing to his tensed thigh, and then with a groan he comes. A low and deep sound of pleasure vibrates against Danny’s chest where he lowers to press himself, muscles clenching and releasing as he milks James’ orgasm from him.

Hands seek - Danny’s noticed James is incredibly affectionate after sex - touching and relishing the sensation against tingling fingers. It’s remarkable, adorable, something Danny has rarely felt with anyone else. He shifts as James shifts him, turning to his side and kissing lazily against James’ pulse as it slowly settles.

“Just like that,” James whispers against him, stroking through messy curls and pulling them straight before releasing them again. He grunts quietly as he pulls free of Danny’s lax body, and rests a heavy leg over Danny’s hip as he holds him near. “A very welcome entree to what promises to be a satisfying dinner.”

“And dessert?”

“We can see about dessert,” James tells him, smiling as Danny traces the smile on his lips. “Insatiable thing.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When something fucks up in a code, you go to the root of it and start again. You rewrite it and check the details. Danny blinks and lowers his chin again, eyes vaguely on the wall before him. Devil’s in the details and liars hide in plain sight. He shifts to kneel and reaches for his laptop, pulling it close and closing all the previous tabs to start another search:_
> 
> James Sheffield

The call comes through around two in the morning, and cuts just as Danny answers. 

It’s rare he says anything - he always waits for someone to speak first. More often than not it’s a wrong number. Sometimes it’s an old friend. Sometimes it’s a silent call and the line goes dead and he knows it’s Society either fucking with him or checking that his number still works.

He sets the phone down and watches it through sleepy eyes as the screen fades to dark again. He didn’t have any other messages on it. The last was from James the night before, being a sappy shit, enough that Danny had grinned until his face hurt before he’d turned it into the pillow. He hopes he can see him today, after a week of agony with James working and Danny similarly indisposed.

Endless hours of hacking. Endless pots of coffee. Enough digging through others’ computers deep enough that _pwd_ has become as regular as breathing. A lot of spam through his server that he’s fairly sure is someone from the IRC giving him shit for the gay porn. He watches more, just to spite them.

He queues up a favorite video of a very capable and faceless man fucking himself with his own particularly bendable cock. In fact, he queues it up to run for four hours straight. Even the most dedicated members of Society won’t sit through that. Hell, Danny wouldn’t voluntarily sit through that, but the throaty moans sound nice in his headphones.

As he tabs back to the IRC, he can’t help but marvel at the fact that what once got him bashed in school and home alike is now what protects him. What’s more, for all their flinging of queer-unfriendly epithets, they don’t seem to mind that he is gay. It’s lulzy, of course, but he’s caught far less shit for it than he did from classmates or family or his father. 

_/JOIN #KaliRiverSoc  
*** Channel not found_

Stretching his bare legs beneath the sheets - showered but still only in a clean pair of boxers - he frowns a little. The grunts in his headphones rise in pitch. At three minutes length, the video will play for 240 total minutes. Danny will hear this anonymous man climax in his own ass eighty times.

He rubs the simmering burn of cocaine from beneath his nose and types again, shaking his head to clear it.

_/JOIN #KaliRiverSoc  
*** Channel not found_

“The fuck,” he sighs. “Get your shit together, lads. Can’t even keep a bloody chat up.”

_/JOIN #keksociety  
*** Channel not found_

“Shit,” Danny whispers. Brow creased, he shakes his head and plugs in another channel name, one populated by low-skill script kiddies ready to raid. Busy. Monitored. A honey pot for informant idiots.

His breath cuts short.

_*** Channel not found_

Another.

_*** Channel not found_

Another.

_*** Channel not found_   
_*** Channel not found_   
_*** Channel not found_

Danny sets his computer to force shut down and watches the black screen with wide eyes. The groans in his headphones are gone. The music is gone. The blank chat windows are gone and all he has is white noise in his head, a hard-on, and a lump in his throat from a panic he can't just swallow away.

Perhaps they scattered.

Maybe some informant got in further than he should have and they fled. In that case a regrouping would be imminent - he’s just got to wait it out. Maybe that was what the call was about. Maybe that’s why there’s been radio silence on his messages.

Maybe the scatter was because of him.

Danny slips his headphones from his ears and sits up higher, crossing his legs beneath himself and setting his laptop to the bed, edges resting on his knees. He restarts it and watches it whirr to life, line upon line of code all adding up to setting his security for the session. He logs in and waits, watching scans run quickly, all determining that he is safe from risk, that his proxies are working without issue or incident, that he is anonymous to any and all that look him up.

He opens a browser and seeks through the latest headlines on his RSS, keywords sparking up along the display as he adds them.

Nothing about The Society. Nothing blamed on them. No internal internet terrorism in London, England or anywhere else in the world. No sabotage through social media. Nothing that would suggest a global scatter.

Danny’s heart beats too hard against his ribs and he feels as though his eyes might melt from his head. He leans to get a cigarette and lights up, taking a deep drag and exhaling without taking it from his lips as he slips into social media, past the newsfeeds and into the conspiracy domain. It’s impressive how often they’re right, but in being wrong far more frequently, it all sounds false.

When you smear shit deep enough, it’s safest to assume that digging deeper will only yield more handfuls of crap.

It also means that everything stinks.

Is a random _ugh_ from someone with an oldmeme name related to this, or was their bus late again this morning? How about a _waitinggggggg_? Is that some nameless faceless member of Society sitting around like him prodding at dead channels, or are they a bored white hat code monkey compiling? Nothing’s specific enough, everything seems related.

Danny drags hard enough against his cigarette that it crackles.

_$ cd relationships  
$ cd past  
$ pwd  
/Users/danny/relationships/past  
$ ls  
steve.txt jason.txt fuckface.txt connor.txt various.txt alex.txt  
$ mv alex.txt current  
$ cd ..  
$ cd current  
$ more alex.txt_

Danny changes his tactic and enters Alex’s details into his next search. He’s faced this wall before, when they first met. It was the first spark that struck his obsession and set it aflame before Alex had even touched him, kissed him, held his hand and looked at him like he couldn’t believe Danny was real at all. It had been the first spark because Alex, for all intents and purposes, does not exist.

And he didn’t then.

A fall into a familiar rabbit hole and Danny soon has his details, revealed in stark cold print on the screens he has simultaneously searching and working before him.

Alistair, not Alex.

Not to the rest of the world.

He was Alex just to Danny.

He finds articles mentioning his unexpected passing but no details as to how he died. He finds photographs, smeared black and white ones from his school days, the one they had used for his obituary. Familiar wounds open up and seep again and it takes Danny three more cigarettes before he can dive deeper into Alistair Turner’s story. This time he reads between the lines, he seeks beneath the obvious and the clear. He doesn't care for his accolades but for the paths he took to gain them. He doesn’t care for his family story but for the relationships beneath and behind the walls.

Danny searches until his legs go numb and he stretches on the bed instead, chin against his chest, as he keeps looking.

He scans almost without reading, eyes skimming past familiar words and pausing only on those that might be something new. Same pictures. Same accolades. Page after page until fingers span down his arm, tracing the whipcord muscle down to his inner elbow until Danny laughs and squirms.

_”You’re ticklish.”_

_“If I say no, will you believe me?” Danny asks, squinting but unable to suppress his smile._

_At his side, Alex lays bare, a sheet draped across his hip and the morning sun casting gold across his skin. He looks like a painting, an ideal imagining of a beautiful young man. He looks like a god, and Danny would readily worship him as one for the rest of his life. Alex’s silver-blue eyes look between his own, and he shakes his head._

_“No,” Alex answers after a moment of thought._

_“A poor joke,” Danny sighs, grinning. “Yes, I’m ticklish. Extremely. Are you?”_

_“No. At least, I don’t believe myself to be.”_

_“So you don’t know with certainty.”_

_“Not with certainty,” Alex agrees, reaching again to trace the backs of his fingers down Danny’s arm. He observes closely the twitching of Danny’s muscles, jerking sensitive in anticipation alone. His fingers needn’t reach his inner elbow again before Danny snorts, laughing, and Alex watches him in a look of incredulity. “I didn’t even touch you that time.”_

_“You’re a tease. You don’t know it but you are,” says Danny, grasping Alex’s fingers to bring to his lips. “Let’s find out if you’re ticklish, too.”_

He wasn’t, they discovered, after a great deal of fluttering fingertips and nuzzles and kisses, all along his body. But Alex responded to every touch with the same gentle amazement as he had when he made Danny laugh, every time he made Danny laugh, again and again when he made Danny laugh and Danny’s suddenly relieved that he’s not here to see him cry. A picture he hadn’t seen before regards him with pale eyes and solemnity in the line of his mouth, hair swept back and shining. The cigarette clutched between Danny’s fingers burns hot enough to singe his skin, and he forces himself to hold it until he can’t stand it any longer and drops it in the ashtray with a pathetic little sound.

It’s when he leans back, blowing against reddened skin, that he sees a word he’s not seen in any other articles before: Cheltenham. _Alistair Turner, upon graduation, will leave Cambridge for Cheltenham._

“GCHQ’s in Cheltenham,” Danny says to himself, to steady his hitching breath with words since his heart won’t ease. They knew, when Society caught sight of his work, that he worked for the government. They didn’t know what part.

Or maybe they bloody well did.

Danny closes his eyes and thins his lips. There was another case, the one they paralleled for this, a British spy found zipped into a bag and smothered in his own bath. The Russians said it was MI6. MI6 said it was the Russians. The family said MI6 did in their own and nothing was ever decided.

“Fuck.”

 _Fuck_.

He opens his eyes, tab after tab after tab scrolled through as piece after piece after piece clicks into place. The Society wasn’t just paralleling the manner of death to turn heads. They found someone who fit the fucking bill entirely, from schooling to government to…

_don’t mess with MI6, man_

Danny’s breath hitches and he presses his fingers against his lips to try to steady it.

_for the greater fucking good lol_

He retches and scrambles from the bed, palm against his mouth as he stumbles to the bathroom and lifts the lid on the toilet before he’s sick. It seems endless, the burning in his nose and mouth, his lungs, his stomach, his entire body, every bone, screaming. Danny sits bent over the bowl until he’s hyperventilating, clutching the cool porcelain and sobbing into it, eyes closed and teeth gritted and entire body aching.

_Danny._

He shakes his head, reaching to flush, sitting against the edge of the bowl shaking.

_I love you._

With a soft wail, Danny’s bent over the toilet again, dry-heaving into nothing, feeling cool water push his breath back at him, cooling the sweat on his brow.

It takes him a few tries to stand up and rinse his mouth, and moments more before he can get back to the bedroom and pull up his phone. His hands shake enough that he uses the emergency call feature on the lock screen, typing in James’ number from memory and holding the screen to his ear as he slips to sit on the floor by the bed. When James picks up, all Danny can manage is a sound.

“Danny?”

_Danny, I love you._

“Is that you, darling? Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Danny answers, the word pushed up like bile was, burning acrid. “I know you barely know me, but if you did, you’d know I’m always fine.”

The silence speaks volumes and with the sensation of a fist around his heart, Danny wonders if James too has been cut away from him. Like Alex, like the Society, like his father and his family and…

“You don’t sound it,” James says simply, and Danny only swallows back the sound he wants to make because if he let it go he’d be sick again.

“I think I lost my job,” he says with a faltering laugh.

He hears James breathing on the other end of the line and clings to his phone harder. He’s curled like a child by the end of his bed. Knees drawn up high, elbows against them to keep them pressed in as much as possible, one hand against his ear and one against the phone that he presses to the other. For the first time in a long time, Danny feels truly broken.

“I really fucked up,” he breathes, biting his lip and letting it go, laughing again. “I’m really looking forward to seeing you tonight.”

“Danny.”

 _No._ His breath freezes in his lungs. _No…_

“I followed my client out of the city,” James tells him softly. “An unexpected maneuver, classified location, I’m sorry.”

“So you won’t be -”

“Tomorrow,” James promises him. “As soon as I’m back I will come and pick you up.”

_Shall I hold you the entire time?_

“Classified location,” Danny echoes, running his tongue against the back of his teeth as if it might scrape away the taste of those words. “That’s cute,” he adds. He almost sounds like he means it.

“Tomorrow morning,” James says, but Danny cuts off the rest of his words with a hum.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. You needn’t.”

“I want to.”

“I know this sounds all bitter boyfriend. It’s not. I mean, I’m not, but you know what I mean. Really. I just…”

Killed the man I loved.

Killed the man I loved who happened to work for MI6.

Killed the man I loved who happened to work for MI6 for the good of a society that’s never given a damn about me.

“Don’t worry about it,” Danny says instead. “Do what you need. I’ll see you when I see you, yeah?”

“I miss you,” James tells him, and that, of everything, feels like a balm against Danny’s skin, like a soft hand in his hair. He just nods, takes a breath to reply but changes his mind. James has hung up by that point anyway.

Danny lets his head drop back against the bed and closes his eyes and tries to swallow down the sensation of something tickling and cloying in his throat. His stomach is empty but he feels no less sick for it. Something scratches against his skin like sandpaper and he can’t make that go away either.

When something fucks up in a code, you go to the root of it and start again. You rewrite it and check the details. Danny blinks and lowers his chin again, eyes vaguely on the wall before him. _Devil’s in the details_ and liars hide in plain sight. He shifts to kneel and reaches for his laptop, pulling it close and closing all the previous tabs to start another search.

 _James Sheffield_ he enters, a keyword search on every medium and newsfeed and social media site he can think of.

He finds some. A plumber in Brighton. A student at Glasgow. Odds and ends but none his own. Their pictures are wrong or their information is, and he skims pages deep before shaking his head to clear away the hum in his ears.

_James Sheffield security_

Even fewer results. The last-name that’s a place-name doesn’t help. He tries it with quotes and without. He tries it spelled with one F, though he knows what the card said.

_Commander James Sheffield_

There’s a ping on this and Danny squeezes his lungs empty when he sighs. Counter-terrorism - in the US, not the UK - but he checks it anyway. He mentioned he travels and that he had business in the states. Danny nearly closes his laptop in exhausted relief but as he does he sees the picture on the profile in question.

The man is half the age of his James, and the face is all wrong.

_James Sheffield Royal Navy_

Nothing.

_Jim Sheffield Commander_

Nothing.

_Jim Sheffield security_

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Danny doesn’t think he has anything left in him to cry. He sits numb, fingers slipping over the touchpad again and again, searching the same names over and over with no results. The definition of insanity. He wonders, for a brief and calm moment, if this is what it feels like to go mad. If this is what it feels like to realize that nothing you knew or held dear or held at all was real.

Then he starts to giggle, childish and little, pressing his hand against his mouth to stifle it, and then he starts to laugh. And then Danny can’t breathe and he’s pressing his tears against the bedcover and punching it and kicking out until the sheets slip and fall on top of him, taking the laptop with them, and he’s curled on the floor in a mess of blankets and false security and he can’t bring himself to get up.

Why should he?

Why does it matter if he does?

He doesn’t exist anyway.

\---

Danny only opens his eyes when he feels the shifting of the floorboards beneath himself, suggesting someone else is standing on them. He’s still beneath the blankets, his laptop fallen open on top of him and holding him down like some comical claw. He supposes it isn’t an incorrect comparison. 

He doesn’t get up, just keeps his eyes on the thin line of light he can see where the blankets twisted off the floor. After a moment, he sees a pair of shoes step by, and around him, and with a sigh he closes his eyes again. There is the sound of shifting fabric as whoever is in his home crouches beside him, and Danny doesn’t even have it in him to tense when a hand is placed where his head lies.

“Danny.”

“Please don’t,” he whispers, voice so hoarse from sick and tears and cigarettes that he can hardly recognize himself. The computer is lifted from him and he makes no move to take it back. It’s locked anyway, and even if it weren’t, he’s in so deep that there’s no light to be seen from where he is. Nothing more than the thin line beneath the blanket, shadowed dark where James crouches.

Where ‘James’ crouches.

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, darling.”

“That,” hisses Danny. “That. Don’t _do_ that.”

He’s got cocaine on his dresser and pills beside it. He doesn’t care. He’s got enough information on his computer to sink him into the pits of a prison sentence from which he’d never emerge. He doesn’t care. He’s got a bloody stranger in his apartment, a stranger who doesn’t exist, a stranger who’s seen him bare and pressed inside him and held him close enough to chase away the chill and that, _that_ Danny cares about.

“You don’t get to call me that,” Danny says, scrabbling for dignity with fingernails ripped raw from a long slide down a sheer bloody cliff. “You don’t.”

James is silent for a while. He doesn’t move to haul the blanket from off of Danny, he doesn’t move to haul Danny up after. He does nothing at all but crouch beside him, stroking gently against his head.

“Why did you kill him?” James asks after a while. “How?”

Danny swallows. “Alex?”

“Alistair Turner,” James replies, and Danny makes a sound, closing his eyes and curling his legs up close to his stomach, curling into the position Alex was in when he died. It seems fitting, if this is the only way he can pay his respects, beg his forgiveness, find some sort of closure.

“Alex,” Danny corrects him. “His name was Alex. He hated the name Alistair.”

James says nothing for long enough that Danny shivers, the quiet so heavy between them that the air grows thin. If only he could stop his heart’s clumsy staggering. If only he could press his pulse to silence. If only he could stop breathing entirely and suffer the way that Alex did then he’d not have to face the world falling apart before him.

He doesn’t deserve that.

Danny deserves far worse.

All his doing. All his fault. His work and his life and his choice.

“I asked him to try something with me,” Danny whispers. “A game, sort of, and he trusted me and I promised -”

He twists away from James’ touch when he rests his hand against his hair again.

“I couldn’t let him out.” The words cut short as if there were hands against his throat. He lifts his fingers there and grips, squeezing enough to feel his pulse struggling before he lets the cool touch slide away with a sob that curls him tighter. “I stayed with him the whole time. I had to. I had to know and I couldn’t leave him like that, alone and fucking scared, I couldn’t - couldn’t betray him that way too.”

No one will believe him. No one should. Danny says it anyway:

“I loved him.”

More silence. James doesn’t challenge the words, he doesn’t tell Danny he believes him, he says nothing. Danny can feel himself start to cry harder and he can’t stop it, no matter how hard he bites against his hand, no matter how hard he holds himself curled. After a while, the blankets are gently shifted from him, slipping from over his head down to his shoulders, lower still, and Danny makes a helpless sound, like an animal caught in a trap.

He doesn’t look at James.

When James touches him again, soothing the tears from the corners of his eyes with a familiar roughened thumb, Danny wonders if this is how cattle feel before they’re knocked on the head and bled.

“He loved you,” James tells him, and it sounds like an accusation, rather than a forgiveness.

_Danny._

He buries his voice against his arm, a long, low wail pulled from so deep inside that his entire body bends with it.

_I love you._

He sobs silently, so empty that there’s nothing left in him to make a sound even as his body wracks itself to the point of pain, shoulders tugging in spastic jerks. His fingernails scrape the floor and his own stomach where his arm curls around himself. If he could tear himself in half, he would. If he could rip himself to pieces, he would. He would give anything, anything, anything, everything.

Anything to see him again.

Anything to touch him again.

Anything to wake up to curious fingers in his hair and stormy blue eyes.

Everything to have never met him.

To live alone with the distant ache of being apart from the far-flung pieces of one’s soul, and to take comfort in the fact that the man who held them was alive and safe and happy.

“Please,” Danny asks. “Please just make it stop. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? That’s why you found me, that’s why you fucked me -”

James swallows down a sound building deep in his throat.

“I died with him,” whispers Danny, almost smiling as he says it. “I won’t even feel it.”

“But I will,” James tells him, and then he takes his hand away and Danny feels entirely unmoored. For a long time neither say anything, and then James moves to push himself to stand and Danny squirms around to his stomach to watch him go. But all James does is shift to sit on the edge of the bed, knees apart and hands clasped between.

He stares straight ahead without blinking, and then his throat works and he turns his head to look past Danny at the room beyond.

“I didn’t know Alist-” He hums, presses his lips together, tilts his head. “I didn’t know Alex Turner. He was new to a division I didn’t frequent, and he was young. He kept to himself, at least his colleagues tell me. He used to jog along the waterfront every morning. He took his coffee black with two sugars. He didn’t like tea. All of these are facts that his file had on him when it was given to me. All these facts don’t make up a person, they make up a shell that people see. To the Service he was an engineer, a remarkable boy lost when he was too young to go, with ideas that would revolutionize the world and catapult us into something magnificent. Power we couldn’t comprehend. A world with no lies. A world where a human being became an equation. Every mannerism an equation. Numbers. To him we were all numbers, but not you.” James turns to look at Danny on the floor before him, now. “Not you.”

It’s too much information, all at once. Bits and pieces of Alex, James, glimpses of a world that Danny has feared and fought fiercely against. When he tries to make sense of it, his buffer overflows. The directories are wiped, the files within cleared. His breath hitches and he remembers suddenly the first time his father hit him and how much like this he felt.

Weak. Stupid. Aching and alone.

He wants to be held once more. Just once, before it happens. A single moment of sanctuary and he knows he doesn’t deserve it so he doesn’t ask.

Alex asked.

Danny tried not to listen.

“He was wrong,” Danny whispers. “He was wrong to trust me. I didn’t mean to love him, it just happened, and that’s the only reason he’s gone. Because he loved me, too, and he shouldn’t have.”

James continues to watch him, that expression he wore in the pub when they first met, the one he wore when he had woken Danny up after they spent the day together but apart, before he held him and didn’t let him go. He watches Danny like he’s the most wonderful thing and he isn’t, he _isn’t._ Danny wants to scream.

“I believe you,” James says after a while, shifting to sit closer to Danny, to reach for him again. “When you say you loved him.”

Danny draws back reflexively from James’ hand. He drags himself to sit up, lifting his fingers in trembling deference. Shaking his head a little, he shuts his eyes to stop the room from spinning.

“Please don’t. You don’t have to do that anymore,” Danny whispers.

He rubs the back of his hand beneath his nose to wipe away the snot, before in agonizing inches he grasps the bed and somehow manages to make himself stand. He’s not a flight risk on a good day, let alone now. James could outpace him without raising his heart rate, and Danny’s strangely grateful when he’s allowed to walk stiffly to the side of the bed and press a cigarette unsteadily between his lips. 

“Thank you for saying that,” he murmurs as he lights it, and lets the burn sear his lungs. “You’ve been very kind.”

“Kindness is as hard to fake as love,” James says, and Danny tenses a little, tossing his lighter aside. He draws a hand through his hair and sits heavily on the bed, away from James. “Is that why you do it? Because you can’t fake falling in love?”

“Sod off.”

“It makes you a perfect weapon,” James tells him softly.

Danny can feel that exhaustion in his voice, that ache he has never been able to place because it’s something he so often takes for granted with himself. It’s so deep within him, so innately part of him, that he cannot remember the last time he was without it. It slips under his skin now like a graft, grows naturally, settles. He has so many layers now that he can’t remember the one that’s real anymore.

If you strip back enough script, line by line, it all comes down to ones and zeros. Blood and bone and breath. Everything else is superficial, a conversion through code to appear as more than it is.

“Poor programming,” Danny decides, with a tight smile that appears and vanishes again without ever reaching his eyes.

“Depends on who’s using it,” suggests James. “And for what purpose.”

Danny folds an arm across his middle, thumbnail flicking against the filter of his cigarette. He doesn’t mind the ash that falls grey to the floor. Doesn’t mind the ember that singes and fades dark against his leg. He hardly feels it through the chill that’s set into his skin, frosting deep enough now to slow his tired heart to rest.

“It makes me stupid.”

“It makes you genuine.”

“It makes me blind,” Danny says, nearly snapping his cigarette when his fingers tighten. “If I’d a fucking pound for every time I looked at you and asked myself, ‘How’d I ever manage to meet someone like this’...” A snort and a long drag finish his thoughts for him.

“You would be rich,” James finishes for him. “And if I had a pound for every day I managed to be indifferent towards you, singlemindedly working towards the goal of my assignment, I would be a poor man.”

“And a bloody terrible agent. Officer. Whatever the fuck you are,” Danny says, and then lifts his shoulder, brows raising. “Whoever the fuck you are.”

He’s glad for the silence that follows, even as his heartbeat thickens in the silence.

“Said it yourself, didn’t you,” Danny observes. “Can’t fake it so you’ve got to give up a bit of yourself to make it real. I hope it’s easier for you than it has been for me when you see it through.”

“Would I be cruel if I said it was easy?” James asks him, leaning back against the bed on one hand as he watches Danny squirm where he sits. “It was easy to take you to dinner. Easy to speak with you, easy to press my mouth to yours and lose myself to you, every day that I did.”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me I’m lying.”

“I said shut up.”

“Danny,” James sighs, sitting forward again. “You found very little on James Sheffield. I can assure you, you will find even less on me if I were to give you my real name. Do you know why?”

A curse sits heavy on Danny’s tongue but he holds it back. Like starting a process, his mind stutters quickly into gear to defragment the information he’s been given. It plays back in pieces, each rearranged into a correct order until the system runs smoothly.

“Because you don’t exist,” Danny says, bitterness souring his tone, like a child forced to do homework they hate. “They’ve erased you.”

“It helps to not exist when you kill for a living,” James sighs, and even here he is not patronizing. Even here he is not threatening or angry. Danny wishes he would be, wishes he would push him down and scream, tell Danny everything Danny has been howling to himself in the hollows of his mind over and over since he locked that trunk.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I promised to be,” James reminds him. “Yesterday, when you called. And a license to kill is as much about knowing when to pull the trigger as when not to pull the trigger.”

“How fucking gracious of you.”

“MI6 thinks you are more important to them as an informant, rather than a corpse.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Danny.”

“I’m a whore for the greater good,” Danny says, spreading his arms and pushing himself to stand again, cigarette smoldering in one hand. “Whores are only good for one thing.”

“They know every secret,” James agrees. “Every tiny turn of personality revealed when one is at their most vulnerable. You are invaluable to them.”

“And to you?”

James swallows, lets his eyes slip away before he turns his head entirely. Danny can’t breathe. His lungs feel like they’re made of lead, they can’t fill. His body feels heavy and light all at once and he tries to think back to the last time he ate something, anything, because he feels so light-headed he might fly.

“What am I to you?”

“A rich man to a poor man,” James tells him.

Danny makes a small sound, brow creasing as he looks away from the startling honesty in James’ expression. Licking apart his dry lips, Danny sighs hard and stubs his cigarette out in the tray beside his bed.

“You don’t get to say things like that,” Danny tells him. “Not now.”

“All I’m saying is what we both know to be the truth.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is. Just like nothing I can tell you about how much I loved - fuck, how much I still love Alex would ever bring him back. And believe me,” Danny says, “I could spend a bloody lifetime trying and die before I finished. And it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters enormously,” James tells him, voice hardening. “It makes all the difference.”

“You’ve got me cornered. Trapped. I’m fucked, James, or whoever you are. I’m fucked and you want to talk about feelings as if we’re on any sort of level bloody ground to do so,” Danny tells him, pausing enough to try and force breath into his lungs. “We’re much alike, you and I. That’s how I know that whatever you’re going to do to me will hurt you. Whether you believe it or not, I’m sorry for that.”

James’ hands curl tighter between his knees as Danny passes by him, seeking out a pair of jeans from the floor. He ducks his head as Danny steps into them, snaring them around his waist with quick, clumsy fingers. Danny hears nails furrowing lines in leather. Skin shifting against taut confines. He hears softening breath that once slowed just like that against his ear and he presses his palms to his mouth, as if to cover the memory of Alex’s breath with the sound of his own.

“When are they coming?” Danny asks in a whisper, as his oxygen depletes and the trunk closes tighter around him. “Or are you just going to - you know, bang. Is that how this works? I’m afraid I don’t know. I’m afraid I -”

He shudders a laugh, the bitter, futile sound of a frightened creature, trapped.

“I’m afraid.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The question echoes in the hollow space between his ears, ringing as if from far away._
> 
> _“For whom do you work, Mr. Holt?”_

The interior of MI6 looks like any other office building Danny’s ever seen. He’s been in few enough to call himself an expert, but he’s fairly sure he expected to be a bit more impressed than he is by grey walls and fluorescent lighting. He’s not led in cuffs or chains, at least. He walks in front of James and behind two other agents, jacket hanging over his hands, taking small steps so he doesn’t trip like a fool and fall face first into the ridiculous carpet.

He and James have not spoken since they left his flat. He was permitted to bring his computer and his phone, predictably confiscated upon his arrival, but he was not allowed an overnight bag. Danny supposes he shouldn’t have expected he might be.

He doesn’t look at James, even when they turn corners and he could, in his periphery. He doesn’t look at anyone. Hardly anyone looks at him, either. He’s led down corridors and up a flight of stairs, past elevators and stairs, and finally into a cool empty room that looks like an interrogation chamber. All it’s missing is the metal hooks for the cuffs to attach to.

Maybe they’re built into the table.

“Mr. Holt,” says one of the agents, gesturing for him to step into the room. “Please have a seat. Someone will be with you shortly. 007.” This is addressed to James, and Danny can feel the tone shift, even as he passes by them both and sits as directed. “Please wait outside.”

James glares but says nothing. Instead, he lifts his eyes to Danny, trying to catch his gaze. It takes a lot for Danny not to look at him, every ounce of any willpower he has left. He wants a cigarette. He wants a drink. He wants a hit. He wants to wake up and for this all to have been a bad fucking trip.

He wants Alex alive.

He wants James to stay in the room with him.

Danny clenches his hands beneath his jacket and shakes his head when he’s offered water. The door closes with James on the other side of it, and Danny feels as though his entire world is tilting, like he’s on a bloody big ship he can’t disembark. His stomach turns but there’s nothing in it to churn free. His eyes burn but there’s nothing left to spill from them.

He hums, to fill the echoing quiet, his voice quickly swallowed into stone walls and cement floor. With something that feels like the beginning of a smile, tugging stiff at the corners of his lips, Danny recalls the musicians who played as the Titanic sank. He hums _Five to One_ instead.

When the door opens, he startles. A lifted hand eases him back into the chair, but Danny doesn’t know how long it’s been. His back aches. He wishes he’d taken the offer of water. He desperately needs a cigarette. The man who sits across from him, analog notepad in hand, is older than Danny by a decade or so, cool-eyed and calm-featured.

“Good evening, Mr. Holt.”

“Is it?”

The man opens the file atop his notebook. He clicks his pen and Danny rubs away the twitch beneath his eye.

“Daniel Edward Holt, birthdate March 8, 1992...”

“Don’t I get a lawyer or something?” Danny asks, folding his arms tighter around his coat.

“You’re not under arrest, Mr. Holt.”

Danny blinks, tongue parting his lips. “I’ve not been charged.”

“No.”

“Then I can go.”

“Of course. You’re here under your own volition, to provide information regarding an ongoing investigation,” the man says, so entirely matter-of-fact that Danny shivers, skin prickling. The man needn’t say more to make his implications clear, but he waits all the same, until Danny lowers his eyes again.

“Can I have a cigarette?” Danny asks. “Please.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Holt, there is no smoking on premises.”

The man opens his file and skims through it. It’s an intimidation tactic, Danny knows, looking through a file of all of Danny’s information, making him curious, making him more nervous than he already is. He’s fairly sure the man knows his file by heart. He’s fairly sure, with James’ constant surveillance over the last few weeks, that the entirety of bloody MI6 knows.

“Some water?” Danny asks quietly instead. The man looks up, gesturing towards the two-way mirror along the back wall. A few moments later one of the men who had walked Danny into the building sets down a glass pitcher and a glass for him to use. “Thank you.”

“What do you do for work, Mr. Holt?”

“I’m a student,” Danny replies, pouring himself some water and taking a sip.

“There is no tertiary institute listed under your current education information.”

“I’m a student of the world” Danny replies, dry. The man hardly responds.

“So what is your means of income?” He asks instead, lifting his eyes. “There is no job listed under employment but you do have a permanent place of residence, not with your immediate family.”

“No,” he says. “I haven’t got any.”

“Family?” The man asks, and Danny makes a sound. “Why?”

“Is this really relevant?”

“You tell me, Mr. Holt.”

“No,” he says again, slower this time. “It isn’t.”

“Then why mention it?”

Danny’s lips click when they part and he rubs his thumb against the glass until it squeaks. “It was my mother’s flat from university. She left it to me.”

“Not to your father.”

“No.”

“And she passed…”

“When I was ten,” Danny sighs. “You know this. You bloody well know this -”

The man clears his throat and Danny quiets, bottom lip sucked between his teeth. “Your source of income. Her life insurance paid out to him, not to you. How do you keep the lights on, Mr. Holt? A direct answer, please.”

“I get by with a little help from my friends,” Danny answers, forcing a smile.

The file is set to the table and thick fingers clasp atop it. Danny lifts his glass to take another sip, the tip of his tongue flicking out to wet his lips after he swallows.

“Mr. Holt, you are here voluntarily,” the man reminds him, ignoring the sound that Danny makes in his throat at the implication. “But that only holds as long as you cooperate willingly. Should your answers prove difficult to parse through, and you difficult by proxy, we will have no choice but to press charges against you and hold you against your will.”

Danny blinks at him, slow and deliberate, and tilts his head.

“What will you charge me with?” He asks.

“Credit card fraud,” the man says. “Possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Potentially hundreds of offences under the Computer Misuse Act. Affiliation with a known terrorist organization. Murder.”

Danny isn’t sure how he keeps his expression stoic, but he does. His thoughts are the black screen after a crash, too much information overloading his system and stopping his processes all at once. When he finally parts his lips again, they form around too many words and none at all, and the room is silent for long minutes but for the hum of the ventilation system.

“You haven’t charged me,” Danny whispers. “You said -”

“Not yet, we haven’t.”

“If you had anything on me, you’d have - they’d have kept me, the Met, they’d have held me,” Danny says, repulsed by the desperation he can feel like cotton in his chest, smothering his lungs and soaking up his blood faster than his heart can pump it. “You don’t have anything.”

“Mr. Holt,” the man sighs. “Of course we do.”

Danny would gladly rack up another charge just for a fucking cigarette right now.

With stiff movements, he forces himself to release the grip on his coat, setting it onto the table in a little heap. He pushes it away and then brings it back. He forces his hands to fold between his knees, legs jiggling and head bowed. If he leaves, he’s either going to prison or he’s dead. Both, most likely, in that order. If he tries to fight it, find a bloody lawyer or something… oh, bollocks, who’s he fucking kidding. No one in their right mind would take him on. Society’s left him for dead, scattered like carrion flies to regroup once the movement near them has stopped.

No Alex.

No James.

The question echoes in the hollow space between his ears, ringing as if from far away.

“For whom do you work, Mr. Holt?”

Danny shakes his head, a chill frosting goosebumps across his skin.

“Wrong query,” Danny murmurs. “Not ‘for whom’. For what.”

A note is made in the file and the man waits for Danny to elaborate. What can he say? He’s known of some Society members caught before, most rookies just starting out, just having passed screening and suddenly under the bus with the wrong code or a badly covered trail. He wonders, cynically, if they hadn’t been tossed as fodder, used simply to have something to rally around for the rest of the members.

“We’re all anonymous online. I can’t give you names,” Danny says finally.

“Aliases?”

“None.”

“Mr. Holt.”

“ _None_ ,” Danny repeats. “They change. They encrypt, they shift. You get used to reading between the lines and figuring out when one person is talking or when another is.”

“Surely there are -”

“No,” Danny says, bringing a hand to his face to rub against it. “No, all the old IRCs and channels are closed, now. They scatter, they regroup. I don’t know where. I won’t know where now - they watch everything. They’ll know you have me and I’m fucked.”

“You said you were all anonymous in this community.”

Danny swallows hard and says nothing for a moment.

“It only works if we are all the same,” Danny says. “A single bee can only prick you. It’s annoying. Maybe it hurts for a bit. But that’s it and you can probably smash the bloody thing for its trouble.”

He licks his lips and reaches for his water, watching as the man slides it out of reach. Danny’s fingers curl and he brings his hand back to his lap.

“Imagine instead then, you’ve a hive of bees. Angry ones. How do you find the ones that sting you? Do you try to smash them all? You never will and all the while you’re getting stung,” Danny says. “Imagine dozens of those hives. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Maybe those within a hive know each other well enough in passing, but they wouldn’t know the bees from other hives. Just that they’re one in the same.”

“A hive has a queen,” the man says, and Danny smiles at this a little, shaking his head.

“Not these ones. The drones are running it.”

“Then how can they organize?”

“Not around a person - a queen,” Danny says. “A cause. A task, a function. Swarm here. Set up a new hive there. One gets busted up and they scatter to other hives instead.”

“You’re talking about the Society,” asks the man, and Danny lets his expression speak for him. For how badly they’ve fucked him, how he sits here now with nothing because of them, he can’t bring himself to say the words. Danny - by intention or accident - is many unfortunate things.

He’s not ready to let himself be a snitch, too.

The man’s pen scratches softly against the file, and Danny knows he’s not telling this man anything new. They’ve got informants all over Society. Society’s written about in the papers. Danny folds his fingers so hard together that the bones shift together, squeezing until it hurts.

“So you joined one of these hives.”

“You find them, they don’t find you,” Danny replies.

“How?”

“Through the internet.” He lifts his eyes when the man’s pen stops scratching. “Shall I tell you the technical terms?”

“Layman's terms is fine, Mr. Holt.”

“It’s easy to find the top levels. Your people are all over them. Basic shit, that - setting up botnets and running DDoS attacks. Trolling. Harassment. Doxxing.”

“The lower levels, then.”

“They use certain terminology, certain keywords,” Danny sighs. “Should you happen upon one in a search deep in the darknet, you will ping on their radar. They’ll see you looking. The rest is following a trail of metaphorical breadcrumbs. They tell you to piss off. You don’t. They’ll dig into you, see what you’ve done with them, touch all your history. They’ll keep telling you to piss off until you find someone willing to talk to you.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you join the Society?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Holt.”

Danny’s jaw tenses so hard he feels a headache coming on and he shakes his head, sighing. He wants his water back. He wants to curl into a ball and cry. He needs a hit. He needs a smoke. He needs Alex. He needs James. He needs -

“A year, give or take.”

“And have you participated?” The man asks him. “Or observed?”

Danny merely lifts his eyes in answer before looking away when the man takes his notes again. The scratch of his pen is like pinpricks over Danny’s skin. He rubs his arm to ease the sensation away, until his own touch begins to feel like James’ hand against his shoulder. Alex’s fingertips against his inner elbow. Finally, it feels like nothing at all.

“Why Alistair?”

As if he was struck, a boot to the gut, Danny’s lungs empty.

“He hated that name,” he says, and the man regards him without expression. “I don’t know why.”

“Mr. Holt.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Once more and you’re done. Why Alistair Turner?”

Danny ducks his head and presses his fingers to his eyes, legs shaking so bad the chair shakes too, with the sound of brass clasps rattling.

“He had something we needed. Something we couldn’t let you have. Couldn’t let anyone have. Couldn’t let just disappear into your fucking surveillance systems, every camera on every bloody corner -”

“I need clear answers, Mr. Holt. You’re talking about his algorithm.”

“Yes.”

“Where is it now?”

“Gone,” Danny says, gasping wet, running shaking, tear-slick fingers against his nose. He laughs, sudden and wild, because whatever he says doesn’t matter now. They’ll section him. They’ll imprison him. They’ll do him in like he did Alex and it won’t change a thing. “It’s gone.”

“Where?”

“Dispersed,” whispers Danny, fingers stretching. “Sent out into the aether for anyone to find, instructions added for anyone to use. If we let you have it, you’d use it against us. Prying apart our every word, thought, our bloody expressions when you catch us on CCTV. Not enough to read our emails. Listen to our phone calls. Fuck people and tell them you love them so you can pry them apart.”

“Like you did to Alistair?” The man asks, and Danny ignores the barb even as it wedges between his ribs.

“In our hands, it’s the end of your lies,” Danny tells him. “In your hands, it would be the end of all free thought as we know it.”

“And in your hands, he died,” the man reminds him, as if Danny needs reminding. As if he’s not all but self-destructed with the infinite loop that Alex errored into his system. “Why not just take the program?”

“I don’t know,” Danny whispers, and the man stands, chair squealing against the ground. Danny starts to stand too but a cold look puts him in his place and Danny shakes his head. “I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t know why - I think -”

“What do you think?”

“They were trying to make it look like you did it. Like the other one, in the suitcase,” Danny whispers, a rush of words that sound like white-noise fucking static to him and he’s sure pick up crystal clear enough to play in court. “I didn’t know he worked for you. They did. So they - they did it to piss everyone off. To piss you off. To sow discord, because it was funny to them, because they hate you, because...”

“They didn’t kill Alistair Turner, Mr. Holt. You did.”

Hands against his face, Danny’s breath burns hot against cold fingers. Danny doesn’t feel it, no more than he can feel any other part of himself, no more than he can breathe with old leather pressing in around him. He isn’t here. He isn’t here and this isn’t happening.

He’s in there with Alex, and he’s never getting out.

“I did it,” he says, “because they told me to.”

It’s very quiet but for the shuddering of Danny’s breath. No pen scratching, no sighs of displeasure, no squeaking of chairs. For a moment, Danny does feel as though he’s in that box and he will be allowed to die.

_Danny, just listen to me. Listen, Danny, please…_

He holds his breath and tries to make his heart stop.

_Danny, I’m afraid… I’m -_

“- afraid that we cannot let you return to your flat this evening, Mr. Holt. There is more information you can provide for us.”

Danny says nothing.

“We strongly recommend you remain in MI6 custody as more information comes to light. In addition, we strongly recommend that you continue to tell us anything we need to know that may assist us in infiltrating the Society. You will provide the details of Alistair Turner’s murder so that we can close the investigation and bring closure to his family.”

“You said you weren’t going to charge me.”

“We’ll draw up an agreement, and if it’s to your satisfaction - and you perform to ours -”

“But you’re keeping me here. You said I could leave,” Danny says, shaking hands spreading heat against the frigid table as he stands. “You said I could go.”

“Of course,” the man answers. "You can. Let us know whenever you’d like to go. We’re only recommending this for your own protection.”

He taps the file neatly into order and the door clicks open. Both men who Danny followed into the bowels of MI6 enter and Danny looks from them to his interrogator, as the barometric pressure inside himself plummets and the room spins.

“This is what you do, isn’t it,” Danny whispers. “This is how you make people disappear. This is what you do to people who try to fight back -”

“No, Mr. Holt,” he interjects. “This is what we do to those who think they’re above the rule of law. Funny how quickly you all cling to it when we play the same way you do. Gentlemen, please escort Mr. Holt to safer quarters. I’ve seen enough of him.”

“But -”

“Adler.” This voice makes Danny’s eyes nearly close with relief. He feels sick with it, sick that he is so happy to hear it. He rubs a hand over his lips again and near-lunges for his glass, now that no one can stop him from fiddling with it and drinking from it to try and wet a perpetually dry throat. “A moment.”

“Bond -”

“Now, please, if you will.”

Danny doesn’t watch James and the interrogator square off, in no more than shifts of their position - straightening their shoulders, tilting their chins, thinning their lips. Within the space of a moment, they come to a silent agreement, and Danny is left alone in the room again. His dumbly drumming heart fills the silence. He lifts his gaze to the cameras, each one in turn. He glances to the two-way mirror but looks away just as quickly when all that’s there is his own reflection.

Danny doesn’t need to see himself to know what a monster he is. He can feel it foul thick as ichor in his blood. He can feel it slough beneath his skin.

_Stupid boy._

_Fucking fairy._

_Useless. Worthless. Idiot._

He wonders if his father will be pleased to find out he was right all along. It’ll make a good story, won’t it? Smeared all over the fronts of newspapers, black as dried blood. The party boy turned hacker who killed the spy who loved him. The spy who caught the hacker by making him fall, in turn. They’ll make movies about it. BBC dramas. They’ll ask _why_ and _how could you_ and they’ll call him a traitor, treasonous, a terrorist.

And none of it matters, because every night until the guilt finally smothers him, he’ll dream of Alex’s fingers tracing his cheek.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. He drinks all the water and wants more and rubs futilely at his eyes that keep streaming. Danny runs his wrist under his nose since he has no tissue. He feels a mess. He’s sure he looks it.

When the door opens again he jerks in his seat as though he's been electrocuted. He purses his lips and doesn’t turn his head.

“Mr. Holt.”

He swallows, trembling, and holds his hands clasped between his thighs, shoulders hunched.

“Stand up, please. We will have 007 escort you to where you’re staying.”

“I don’t want to go with him,” Danny says. He presses his lips together in a thin line as soon as the words pass them, and shakes his head.

“It’s either that,” the man - Adler - says, “or you’re coming with me to a particularly secure location several stories down. Stand up, Mr. Holt.”

Each word is cut short, like a whipcrack, like a gunshot. Like fists striking against wood and old leather. Danny stands and clutches his coat against his stomach, turning towards their voices without raising his eyes to any of them.

He’s taken back through the building, a blur of dull grey and too-bright lights. Two technicians return his computer and phone to him. He doesn’t ask what they’ve done to them - he doesn’t need to. He knows what he’d do in their situation, with the passwords picked up through keystroke recording, and the computer feels like a parasite against his side as he clutches it beneath his arm. It will drain every byte of information directly back to them. They’ll know every key he presses, every site he visits, every conversation shared or image viewed. They know his history to an embarrassing detail and outside of smashing the thing, every move Danny makes will mark him a traitor to Society.

He asks to go to the bathroom, please, and he’s grateful when the man they send in with him doesn’t comment on the dry, unproductive retching until Danny’s satisfied that he’s empty.

Hollow.

Nothing, now, to anyone.

A traitor to the crown and a traitor to Society. A traitor to Alex and his work.

Danny says nothing and keeps his eyes low when James holds open the door for him, and he’s not a step outside it when he fumbles shaking for a cigarette.

James doesn’t stop him. He lets the door close behind them both and slips his hands into his pockets as Danny takes a lungful of smoke and exhales quickly. James watches him and says nothing, doesn’t come nearer, doesn’t step further. He stands close enough that it’s obvious they’re together and it sets Danny’s teeth on edge.

“What did you do?”

“Negotiated custody,” James replies. Danny snorts, shakes his head and brings his hand trembling to his hair.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Don’t be such - don’t. Just don’t.” Danny’s brows furrow and he pushes the filter against his lips again, as though the pressure will allow more smoke into his lungs that way.

“Had you stayed at MI6,” James replies, “you would have had little access to anything but the facilities and occasionally a meal. With this arrangement you are on a glorified house arrest.”

“Just what I’ve always wanted.” Danny spools smoke from his lips, thumbnail catching so hard, so often against the filter of his cigarette that he nearly breaks it.

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“The illusion of freedom rather than the real thing,” Danny asks. “Just as closely watched. Just as confined. You’re right, that’s much better,” he says, taking a step down and gritting his teeth when James’ heels click behind him. He turns to face James, unable yet to bring himself to meet his eyes or come anywhere near them.

Danny wonders how hard he’d have to hurtle himself down the stairs to break his own bloody neck. He takes another drag.

“Glorified house arrest,” he repeats softly. “Rather than friends. Rather than a life. Rather than a relationship,” he adds, laughing out all the air in his lungs in one harsh breath. “Is this where I throw myself at you and thank you for saving me?”

James’ smile is gentle, and it does reach his eyes.

“Oh, I would hardly think you would sell yourself so short,” he replies. Danny feels James’ careful gaze on him as he considers the stairs again, tension in James’ arms in case he has to lunge and catch him, break his fall with his own body. He might even do it, Danny reasons, if only to save his own arse. “I suppose this is where you figure out how you will save yourself. Come on.”

“Where?”

“To your house for the arrest,” James replies, monotone, stepping past Danny to the car that pulls up at the curb. He holds open the door and waits as Danny deliberately takes his time finishing the cigarette.

“I don’t want to go there,” Danny says. Stubborn, always, even now when he’s so tired he stumbles. James grasps his arm to stop his fall and Danny jerks his elbow away, gaze sharp.

“You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“If it’s with you, it doesn’t matter,” Danny whispers, tossing his cigarette to the ground as he drops heavy into the seat. He shifts his computer to his lap, for so long his only source of information, of friends, of something like a family. It feels alien to him now, the stickers he lovingly applied mocking him.

It’s a cruel parody, like every kiss he shared with James, like every motion he made towards the greater good. Like the half-truths he spoke to Alex. Like the genuine truths they became.

Danny drops the machine to the floor at his feet, and shoves his coat atop it.

James gets in the back but makes no move to touch Danny again. As the car pulls away and the young man curls his legs up against the seat, James drops his head back and closes his eyes. Danny hates that he times his breathing with the agent’s as they move closer and closer to James’ flat.

Inside, it looks the same, nothing shifted, nothing new. Though he isn’t sure what he had expected would change. The only thing that had happened was in his mind, on his computer, in a virtual world that seems so utterly untouchable now, when reality hits him so squarely in the face. Danny’s boots thud to the floor as he toes them off - one, and then the other. He doesn’t stop James from taking his coat from him to hang beside the door. James doesn’t stop him from dropping his computer with a bit too much spite against the counter.

The counter where James lifted him with firm hands around his waist.

The counter where they ate pancakes together and kissed over coffee.

The counter that faces the terrace where Danny smoked wearing nothing more than pants and James’ sweater, imagining how together they might watch the seasons change down King’s Road.

It feels foreign to even consider it now, as if Danny’s watching his own ghost perform the motions cached in memory. He fumbles for another cigarette, tapping it against the packet in time with his steps further into this place that is now a prison to him. For a few moments, a few days, it had felt like home.

“I don’t know what to do now. They didn’t tell me,” Danny says, swallowing to keep his voice steady, brow creased. “I don’t know…”

He blinks, lips parting. His glasses, rarely worn but brought over last time he was here, rest on the table beside the couch. James’ fingers had brushed his temple as he slid them from Danny’s nose. He’d fallen asleep with his head in James’ lap as they watched a movie together.

A soft sound asphyxiates in his throat and Danny presses his palm against his eye. His cigarette falls to his feet as he tries to push the tears away, the memories, the failure, the miserable fucking failure of his entire fucking life.

_$ cd current  
cd: no such file or directory: current  
$ cd relationships  
cd: no such file or directory: relationships  
$ cd danny  
cd: no such file or directory: danny_


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _James hasn’t touched him any more than to lay a blanket over him at night, and once to catch Danny when his vertigo became too intense and he nearly fell. Jerking his arm free as if it were scalded, Danny leveled him with a look and nearly felt guilty - nearly - when James’ gaze softened with all the suddenness of lift cords snapping. A shocked surprise, and then a sad understanding._
> 
> _“Please don’t touch me,” Danny told him, to make sure that understanding stuck._
> 
> _It must have, because James doesn’t lay the blanket over him again._

James makes breakfast and finds it uneaten hours later. He makes coffee and finds it cold. He hears Danny get up and meander to the bathroom, he hears the toilet flush and the tap run as he slurps water, and then he listens to him crawl back onto the couch and sleep again.

For days, he does nothing else.

James doesn’t leave the apartment - he takes work from home. He takes calls. He takes annoyed messages left by M when he no longer picks up her number and he doesn’t return them. He watches over Danny and Danny knows he does. It takes him a week to start to feel the signs of withdrawal and he curls into himself on the sofa and bites his lip to keep the sounds of pain away.

He throws up.

He drinks water.

He starts to drink the coffee.

He still doesn’t eat.

James hasn’t touched him any more than to lay a blanket over him at night, and once to catch Danny when his vertigo became too intense and he nearly fell. Jerking his arm free as if it were scalded, Danny leveled him with a look and nearly felt guilty - nearly - when James’ gaze softened with all the suddenness of lift cords snapping. A shocked surprise, and then a sad understanding.

“Please don’t touch me,” Danny told him, to make sure that understanding stuck.

It must have, because James doesn’t lay the blanket over him again.

Danny pulls it over himself instead. He’s taken a few pieces of bread, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, but he’s hardly eaten more than that. His stomach finally stopped churning a few days before, settling into icy quiet. His heart has yet to stop squeezing as if it’s going to burst.

He watches from the couch as James moves through the kitchen.

“Do you tell them about me?” Danny asks.

“What I can, without them wanting to section you.”

“Should I be?”

“Sectioned?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Danny snorts, drawing the blanket up snug against his unshaven cheek. “You tell them I’ve not touched the computer,” he says. “What do they say?”

“That I should make you,” James replies, setting the kettle to boil, taking down two mugs, as he always does, despite Danny’s refusal to take his own up most of the time. “I tell them it’s hardly worth the fight, if all you’ll do is set another four hour long loop of a porno for them to watch.”

An unfamiliar tug of muscles gives Danny goosebumps when he feels himself smile at this. “You’ve seen it too, then.”

“The remarkable feat of dexterity that you’re so fond of showing them? Yes,” James says. “They insisted I watch it, so as to convince me to convince you to stop.”

“And?”

“It’s an enviable skill to self-fornicate,” James answers. “I asked if they were trying to tell me something.”

Danny laughs, and it catches him so off-guard that his eyes heat and dampen at the sensation. He tilts his cheek against the flattened pillow beneath him and breathes out shaky to quiet the remnants of his pleasure. How much this dizziness feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.

How many times he’s slipped, watching upward now toward the heights from which he fell.

For a while, they don’t speak again, as the kettle boils and the kitchen is occupied by James fixing a snack for himself. He’s seen enough food wasted now to allow Danny to make his own.

“Tea?”

“No.”

James doesn’t try to convince him. Instead, he brings him a mug of coffee to set on the small coffee table as he passes Danny by on his way to the study again. The shift of blankets nearly stops him, fingers spread in anticipation - in hope. The contact never comes, only the scrape of the mug against the table as Danny lifts it and himself in turn. The weight of Danny’s attention on him as he sits back against the arm of the couch, legs drawn up in his self-made nest, is uncanny.

James has spent a lifetime exhausting himself in every way imaginable. Collapsing buildings and car chases. Uncontrolled aircraft and gunfire enough that in another year he’ll need bloody hearing aids.

Any of those things, in any amount or combination, would feel less tiring than this.

“Did you need anything?” James asks, hand on the doorframe to the study, bracing for the snort or sharp retort.

Danny licks the coffee from his lips, and sucks the lower one into his mouth. He can feel his pulse through the tender skin. He bites down to feel it quicken.

“Why?” He finally asks. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I thought it would be more comfortable than the holding cell.”

“Give me something that isn’t a scripted answer, please,” Danny asks. James sighs, ducking his head a moment as his fingers flex against the doorjamb.

“I was scared that were you to be returned to your apartment under different supervision you would not last longer than a week.”

“You thought I would off myself.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because despite your incredible abilities,” James turns back to him. “Hacking and wit and cleverness, you cannot lie. Your face cannot lie. You are entirely sincere. You told me once that it was what got you into this mess in the first place - I believe you. I could not in good conscience leave you there and damn well let you try to do yourself harm.”

Danny swallows, considers the answer, considers the anger he can feel boil up his throat like acid. He keeps it behind pursed lips, takes enough breaths to soothe it.

“Why?” He asks again.

“Because I told you once I would not let you go,” James reminds him. “And I don’t think I have the capacity to lie - truly lie - either.”

“‘For as long as possible’,” Danny says. “That’s what you said. That you’d hold me for as long as possible.”

James’ gaze lifts to him again and Danny twists his own away, down to the coils of steam rising from his coffee. He brings it to his lips but doesn’t sip, letting the heat scald and the aroma fill him. When he’d stood on the terrace and teased and begged for James to bring it to him, he’d called him a lifesaver for it.

Back when Danny had a life worth saving.

Back when he’d deluded himself that it was.

“Are you done yet?” Danny asks, brows furrowed. “It can’t be easy, carrying all that weight. I know you listened. The first interview, the second, the fucking fifth. You’ve heard all of it. Everything I did. Everything I am. Aren’t you tired yet?”

James smiles then, that coy and mysterious thing that Danny had shivered thinking about for days after he had first seen it. He taps his fingers gently against the doorframe and then lets his hand hiss quietly against it as he slips it down and lets the wood go.

“I have done enough in my life,” he says, “to know that who you are and what you do are very different things. Circumstances. Reasons. They lead us to certain decisions that could be despicable to us in any other given time or place.”

James considers the mug in his hand, tea steaming before him, and takes a cautious step back towards the couch. Another. Another, until he is standing at the opposite end of it to where Danny sits.

“You’re a stubborn boy,” he tells him fondly. “It’s so admirable you probably have no idea.”

Danny could no more restrain the shiver that courses through him than he could stop his heart from beating, and God knows he’s tried that and failed enough times. Shoulders curving upward, he arches as if James’ words are fingers down his spine, fingernails scraping softly. With a small sound, he settles again, the furrow set in his brow again but less than before.

The leather couch cushion, creaking, betrays the curl of Danny’s toes against its slick surface.

“You’ve done things. Things that in the light of day seem incomprehensible,” Danny whispers. They’re being listened to, he’s certain of it, he can feel the hum in his ear and he shifts beneath the blankets -

“Yes.”

The nervous movements cease, the process killed by code outside Danny’s own making. He swallows, biting and releasing his lip.

“Things you have to do - that you feel you have to do,” he says, “because it’s like the voice of God is telling you that there’s no other way.”

James leans his hip against the arm of the couch and resists, with everything he has, reaching out to touch Danny’s foot beneath the blanket.

“And you follow it,” James agrees, continues for him, “and you listen. Because surely, surely something that sounds so right, that might hurt for just a moment, can’t be an evil when it’s for the greater good.”

Danny’s shoulders jerk but he sighs, eyes towards the ceiling to keep back the sharp and sudden tears that swell in him. A quick sound clears his throat. He folds his fingers tighter around his mug.

“That’s honor, isn’t it,” he finally whispers, a joyless smile snaring his lips. “That’s loyalty. Bravery, they call it. Because it would be selfish to cling to something for yourself when others will suffer if you do. Because no one else but you can do it and if you don’t, for your own greed -”

“For love.”

“For love,” Danny whispers, the word choking him into another sharp shudder. “Everyone else will pay the price for it.”

“Collateral damage. You, instead of others.”

“You, because that’s what you signed on for.”

James just watches him, the way Danny’s hands tremble and the coffee within the mug does the same. He watches Danny bring a hand to his eyes and press against them, and stands from the couch once more to take the mug from his hands and set it to the table with his own.

Without a word, he strokes through Danny’s hair, ignoring the hum of displeasure, the shaking of his head. He holds Danny close as he had the last time they were in this flat together before this mess, when James had him half-asleep and mumbling about mundane things in bed together, when James made him laugh over some ridiculous pun he made in the spur of the moment. He wraps his arms around Danny’s shoulders, cradling his head, and presses his cheek against the messy dirty curls.

When Danny takes a breath to ask him to stop, James whispers for him to hush.

The response is immediate, this exceptional young man’s slight form shuddering violently into a sob. This is not the thin tears that fall during every interrogation, unbidden and uncontrolled. These are not tears of anger and betrayal and righteous indignation.

This is a boy who has tried for too long to cover wounds that haven’t been allowed to heal. This is a man who in his devotion to what he believes is right has wounded himself even more, for the sake of others. Danny’s tears soak against James’ shirt and he draws a breath as slender fingers curl sharp against him.

He says nothing more. He needn’t. Danny has sought and received enough permission, enough trust, enough space, to finally allow himself to begin healing. It hurts to uncover wounds like that, to relieve the poorly-staunching pressure and examine them so they can be fixed.

James knows the vulnerability required for it all too well.

Danny cries for what feels like hours, until his bones ache and his face hurts. Even then, even covered in tears and snot and spit, James does not let him go. He sits against the arm of the couch and cradles Danny near, hoists him closer when he slips and allows Danny to take what he needs. Slowly, the grip on James’ shirt eases. Danny pulls away, not far enough to go, just enough to shift on the couch a bit more and settle his head in James’ lap. Breath shudders from him as James cards his fingers through his hair. Long moments more they sit this way together, quiet and drowsy and exhausted by their own lot in life.

Their drinks get cold.

After a while, Danny dozes, breathing steady and body lax, and James lowers him to the couch to sleep properly. Shifting the blanket to cover him again, James bends to press a lingering kiss to his temple.

Taking both their mugs to the kitchen to wash later, James wonders if Danny ever realized just how genuinely James loved him. How quickly he found the thought of spying on him sickening. How long it took James to call in and report and show up at headquarters with information. He knew what the boy had done, long before the interrogations that James insisted on observing, every one. He knew. And in that awareness, he saw himself - the same motivation, the same ability to throw himself fully into an assignment regardless of the cruelties it will rain down on him.

Danny became to him a beacon of everything light. He became a reason to be better.

James wonders if Danny ever saw that, if he ever allowed himself to see, or if James was naive in telling himself that he thought Danny loved him, too. Perhaps he only imagined it. Perhaps he only hoped that he caught glimpses, once in a while, of a look or a touch, a whisper or just a breath that suggested it.

He wonders, as he returns to his study and turns off his computer. He wonders, as he gets undressed and drops quietly into bed, draping an arm over his eyes. He’s tired, as Danny is. He hasn’t slept just as Danny hasn’t slept, staying up to make sure he wouldn’t hurt himself, that he was eating, that he would not get sick. He’s tired, helping Danny accept and water his loss with tears to watch the dead ground soak it up and live again.

He wonders and he sleeps. He wakes only when there is a shift in the bed behind him, and something soft and small nuzzles just between his shoulders and settles again. He listens to Danny’s breath grow steady his sleep, and allows his eyes to close again.

Both sleep for most of the day and through until morning, and both finally wake rested.

\---

James spreads his fingers across the still-warm sheets beside him, turning finally to face where Danny slept. He didn’t move throughout the night - only small adjustments in his sleep. And James didn’t turn to pull the boy against him, or kiss his brow or comb his wild hair with work-worn fingers. It isn’t clear what will become of them. There’s far more stacked against their chances of sharing anything beyond a terse understanding. And despite his reputation, Bond is rarely one to force his will, in that way, on another.

He tilts his cheek against Danny’s pillow, and breathes him in. Heart soothed and stirred all at once, he finds not only the scent of clean sweat and soap there, but more familiar smells from the flat beyond. Butter and eggs. Coffee. Tobacco, though only faintly.

It should be beneath a man of his age and history to play pretend, but James gives himself a few moments more before slowly shifting from bed to seek out his clothes.

Pulling on a dull grey shawl-neck cardigan - lazy, comfortable for today - James stops in the doorway to the living room. He hesitates only a beat before he proceeds to seek out the kettle for tea, but it’s enough to take in the scene that seems sprung from his imaginings only moments before. Danny coils feline and small on the couch, blankets tented over his knees, a too-large navy jumper clinging warm to wide shoulders. His glasses reflect the screen from the computer open in his lap, fingers tapping quietly in fits and starts. A toasted muffin, shining with butter, sits suspended between his lips.

Without raising his eyes, Danny hooks a finger beneath his headphones and slides one cup from his ear. He catches the muffin with his other hand, covering his mouth with the backs of his fingers.

“Eggs warming in the oven,” he murmurs.

“Thank you,” James says, watching as Danny slips his headphones back on and continues to pensively devour his muffin as he works. It feels freer in this room, now, like air has been allowed into it. Danny is not ignoring him. Should James call his name he would turn, he would look and take his headphones off if necessary to listen.

James doesn’t call. He just watches him a moment more.

In the oven sits a plate of eggs and bacon, sliced muffin in the corner and a fried tomato on top. It’s more of a breakfast than James has been bothered to make himself in days. It’s more food - if he assumes Danny ate something similar - than the boy has had in weeks for one meal.

James sets it to the counter and catches the kettle before it whistles, pouring himself a mug of tea. He doesn’t look up as he feels attention on him, Danny’s gaze lingering curious for a moment more. When he returns the kettle to the stove, Danny’s eyes return to his screen.

“Christ. They’ve got me wired me up like a bloody bomb,” Danny mutters. James lifts a brow but Danny only settles deeper into the couch, his head resting against the arm, computer nearly above him where he props it on his leg. It makes James’ neck hurt just to see the way he’s contorted himself, but Danny appears far from uncomfortable.

He almost seems relaxed.

Almost, but for the muttered curses towards MI6 for whatever they’ve done to his computer. James doesn’t know, though he can imagine. Recording every movement, every display and keystroke. Reporting it all back piece by piece.

When James begins to eat, another glance comes his way. It’s fleeting as the brush of moth wings, there and gone again. 

“Did you go to my flat?” Danny asks from behind his screen. James can see only the blankets draped across Danny’s legs, an ankle against the opposite knee. He can make out the hint of a striped sock peeking from beneath.

“No, I sent a good friend,” James replies, biting into his muffin and chewing slowly as he watches Danny’s toes curl and flex. “I didn’t want the dogs set on my flat if I were to leave, and I didn’t trust anyone else. She assured me she got as much from your wardrobe as she could carry.”

“She?”

“Women do work in MI6, Danny,” James laughs. “She’s a former field agent.”

“Why former?”

“Not everyone is cut out for fieldwork.”

“How do you know her?”

“She shot me off a train once,” James replies easily, taking a sip of his tea. “Set me into early retirement for a few months until the tedium gnawed at me and I came back.”

The leather cushions squeak as Danny fidgets, lowering his foot and stretching his legs along the length of the couch. He keeps the computer on his stomach. Just above its stickered screen, James can see Danny’s hair curling wild around his headphones. The soft click of music from them has stopped.

“Do you always make such questionable friendships?”

“Exclusively,” James says. “Questionable isn’t really fair, though. When the target’s not moving, she’s a fine shot.”

“What’s her name?”

“Eve.”

Danny makes a small sound, appreciative of the honesty and information both. He taps a few times and sighs sharply, toes spreading and relaxing again. “Have you been shot before?”

“Shall I list chronologically or alphabetically by country in which the incident happened?”

Danny snorts. “Shit.”

“I’ve been shot often enough to know when to duck, now, to avoid it.”

This finally brings Danny’s gaze above the edge of his screen. His eyes are red-rimmed still, puffy from the night before. But he’s showered and shaved, and settled into clean clothes, even if he is still bundled up beneath the nest of blankets that has all but consumed the sofa. James has added them one by one over their weeks together. First for concern over Danny’s ceaseless shivering, then when his fitful unrest slipped them to the floor. Finally, once the withdrawals and stress settled from him, James added a few more just to see if Danny would at any point say anything about being buried beneath seven blankets.

He hasn’t, instead tangling himself up within them until he all but vanished beneath.

“I thought at first you had a skin condition,” Danny observes. James lifts a brow. “Then when you said you were in the military, I assumed the scars were from that instead.”

“A few of them,” James allows, “but not the majority.”

Danny presses a finger to the nosepiece of his glasses, and his eyes narrow a little. “Burma.”

“Stabbed,” James allows, chasing the egg yolk with a piece of muffin on his plate. “Electrocuted. Not shot.”

Danny blinks at him as James takes a bite of his breakfast and raises an eyebrow, welcoming more questions as he enjoys his meal. “Brazil?”

“Skimmed, never embedded,” James replies, relishing, suddenly, the strangeness in being able to be so bloody honest about something so ridiculous. He will not find pity here, he will not have Danny fawning over him fluttering in worry. It’s freeing, considering how long James has spent growing utterly indifferent to his many injuries and scars.

“China.”

“Let’s not get into China.”

“Why not?”

“I hate China.” James pauses, cup against his lips. “More accurately, China hates me.”

He takes a sip and Danny squints again, but he allows this pass. He folds his screen down a little and slides off his headphones, savoring the honesty - hell, conversation at all - far too much to continue affecting indifference. If he’s trapped here indefinitely, perhaps it doesn’t hurt to find an accord with the man who makes him coffee and brings him blankets, let alone keeps him from being locked away eternally in the bowels of Vauxhall.

“Strangest place you’ve ever been.”

“Antarctica,” James says, then shakes his head. “No, space.”

“Piss off,” snorts Danny, reaching for his headphones again.

“Not far into it. Exosphere, I think they said.”

“They?”

“The branch that handles science and technology.”

“What were you - _why_?”

At this, James shakes his head little, but Danny can see the smile in his eyes as he says, “Afraid it’s confidential for another few years, or until that satellite drops.”

Danny grins, nose wrinkling, but quickly smooths his expression. The computer clicks closed entirely and Danny drops it to the floor, turning to his side and nestling deeper into his layered cocoon of fleece and wool. He tucks his arm beneath his head to watch James, hoping he’s far enough away that James can’t see the increasingly genuine delight Danny feels to hear this.

“Strangest thing that’s ever happened to you,” he asks, then clarifies. “That you can talk about.”

James considers for a few mouthfuls, relishing the conversation, the fully made breakfast, the company. “I met a man with a particular proclivity for biting people with his metal teeth, though he refused to cannibalize anyone that I’m aware of. Strange fellow. Got eaten by sharks in the end, if I recall. His boss was a far stranger man than he was.” He turns his fork in the yolk some more and frowns, thinking. “I nearly lost the crown jewels to a laser.”

“ _The_ crown jewels?”

James snorts. “No, no, just mine.”

Danny tries, valiantly, to muffle his laugh with blankets tactically placed over his mouth, but James hears him snort anyway. The air, clean and crisp, that seems to have replaced the miserable stuffiness of the flat seems sweeter still for that sound. The sun outside seems somehow brighter.

“Seem to have made it out of that unscathed,” Danny finally says, wry.

“I still have nightmares about that one,” James admits, laughing himself as he takes up the last piece of his breakfast muffin to soak up the egg yolk left on his plate, the grease from the bacon, some tomato seeds. “The rest has become rather dull, I’m afraid, it seems so entirely familiar it’s as though they plan it to be as unexciting for me as possible.”

“What, jumping out of planes and skiing down mountain tops?”

“You know, I don’t get to ski as much as I’d like to,” James says, taking up his plate and setting it into the sink. “Thank you for breakfast, it was lovely.”

“You’re welcome.”

Danny curls the backs of his fingers against his cheek to cool the warmth there, watching James as he moves about the kitchen. He recalls how before his world ended, he drank up every elegant motion of this man with all the thirst of someone withering in the desert. The way James stands with his hips cocked just a little off center, the water-smooth movements of the muscles in his back...

The sadness he feels for that memory isn’t an acute sensation, sharp enough to suck the air from his lungs. It’s more like a bruise, healing except when he presses his fingers against it to watch the colors change. Danny was someone else then, watching a man who wasn’t the one he shares space with now. It’s like seeing a photograph of yourself from when you were pissed. You know it’s you, and you know you were there, but everything else is murky.

“You like skiing?” Danny asks, after a moment. “I’ve never been.”

“I haven’t been in years,” James admits quietly as he sets the plate to the sink and considers washing it then. He could. He should, perhaps, but he can feel the tug of wanting to be near Danny again, to watch him, to possibly touch him, if he’s allowed. So he returns, snagging his mug as he goes. “I stayed with a man, when I was young, who taught me to ski. Two winters he took me to the slopes and we practiced. Slaloming, speed, agility, trekking, hiking…” He smiles, moving to sit against the arm of the couch again, as he had the day before. “I enjoy the freedom of it. There is a lot of control involved, a lot of concentration but when you hit that point, where the wind is against your face and you can feel your body respond without your mind explicitly sending instructions… it’s euphoric.”

Danny finds that his smile has returned, unexpectedly, and he doesn’t erase it this time. Blankets wrapping around him, he fidgets slowly to his back to watch James across from him, and stretches his legs straight again. His toes rest against the side of James’ thigh. He leaves them there. 

“Like riding a bike,” Danny says. “Only, you know - down a mountainside. An icy mountainside. With planks strapped to your feet.”

“That’s the general idea of it, yes.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“It is,” James laughs. “A little.”

“In a good way.”

“It is,” he says again.

“You should go again,” Danny suggests. A moment passes in which his own presence here counteracts his words, and he sucks his lips between his teeth. He hopes the small sound he makes suffices for apology, smile turning rueful as he chastens himself.

James smiles as he watches him, blinking slowly to accept both the words and the apology for how long it could possibly take to enjoy skiing again as before. Carefully, James lets his hand drop down to stroke gently against a socked foot. “I’m getting too old,” he laughs, eyes narrowing. A moment passes, another. “What do you lose yourself to?” He asks. “As I do to the snow. What is your skiing?”

Danny’s brow creases a little. He’s not sure he’s ever been asked before - what he enjoys, what he likes. What moves him. His father, his teachers - they didn’t care. The Society certainly didn’t and he’d not have told them even if they had. It would only be more fuel for their lulz. All the countless, ceaseless fucking questions MI6 has asked him have been focused far more on what he’s done than who he is.

Alex listened, when Danny told him, and that made up for the curious distance in that man that never lead him to ask. It wasn’t carelessness, nor lack of interest. It would have been extraneous detail, with no bearing on Alex’s opinion of Danny either way. He was beautiful in that way, strong-minded and relentlessly focused. He was tragic in that way, too.

Danny draws a breath and offers a smile, small and brief. “I do enjoy programming. Making something and letting it go, trying to work the bugs out of it as it’s rolling forward. Sex,” he says, with a shrug and nothing more to say about it, until he remembers all at once. “Dancing,” Danny decides. “I love dancing.”

They talked about this once, before.

Danny tries to pretend they never have.

“Nothing formal, but going to a club, you know. Bright lights and loud music. Enough darkness that no one can really make you out until they’re close. That point,” he says, “when your body moves faster, more intuitively than your thoughts, and your mind quiets. I love that.”

James can imagine him, lithe and sweaty and beautiful, eyes closed and body just moving to the beat, through it, around it. He imagines for a moment being younger, going to a club like that and meeting Danny that way, bodies pressed close, eyes unopened, just feeling for the other in the space between sounds. “You must be beautiful when you dance.”

“Hardly,” Danny snorts, smiling. “I got told once I look like an electric eel. Too fast and jerking and… and I don't care.” He grins suddenly. “I don’t care. Because my entire world in that moment is nothing more than movement and I feel like I’m flying.”

James squeezes against his foot, gently stroking down to his ankle and back up.

He wants to tell Danny he’s beautiful now. He takes a breath and sighs it wordlessly. He will another time, perhaps.

“Maybe someday we’ll get back to it,” Danny says, trying to sound convincing but knowing that he does not.

He watches James’ hand against his foot, every whisper of movement spreading heat through him. How long has it been since someone’s touched him so kindly? Not like the night before, holding Danny because he would shake himself to pieces otherwise. Not like the patient, almost paternal way James tucks Danny’s hair behind his ear when he thinks he’s sleeping. This is a touch given not out of obligation, but desire to be near. The same desire that drove Danny to lay beside him in bed the night before, to bring warmth and sensation back to their skin and melt away the chill.

James strokes his thumb against Danny’s ankle and Danny's heart speeds as if he’s stumbled. With a genuine - if small - smile, Danny shakes his head a little and slips his feet away. The blankets come loose in layers until he sets his feet to the floor and stands, taking up his cigarettes from the table. By the terrace door, he stops. He offers James another smile before turning away again.

“Maybe we can order in tonight,” he says, hopeful. “You shouldn’t have to cook again, and I can’t leave, so…”

“Indian,” James agrees, pushing to stand as well, but not following Danny to the balcony. “Same as our last?”

Danny’s smile is bright and he ducks his head in a nod, relieved. Only then does he open the door, lighting the cigarette as he goes. James watches him and feels his muscles relax from the painful tension of uncertainty they had been kept in for the last few weeks. 

Perhaps they may have something again.

Friendship. Kindness. Understanding.

Though he aches for the intimacy of before, there is such a warmth in this knowledge. For men like them, these things are rare. Fragile. They are worth more than James could have dared hope to have again.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Each night, Danny hoped that James would turn to him and grab him close. Each night before now, Danny knew he’d reject this closeness, no matter how much he’s ached for it. And now that both have bled dry their wounds - kept protected and hidden despite the gouts of pain from within - each touch becomes like medicine._

During the day, Danny works - much as it can be called work, rather than ‘faffing about on the internet all day’. No one’s told him anything he should or shouldn’t do. No one’s given him instruction. So when the Society’s hum reaches him again, he returns to business as usual.

MI6 closes the investigation, with no formal announcement that might raise questions from the populace at large as to how MI6 could declare a murder of one of their own ‘unsolved’ and leave it at that. Society finds the information readily, so quickly in fact that Danny is wary they’ll get suspicious. They don’t, too busy spamming their new IRC with success.gifs and talk of what to do next.

Kali River dries up. Danny ditches his screenname. One of the faceless again, watching and chatting and listening, though with his closer contacts at the ready for more important work than setting up botnets. He plants a rootkit in the system of a CCTV manufacturer contracted to the government, just to see what happens.

No call. No visit. Nothing.

It’s so quiet most days that Danny forgets he’s being observed.

It almost feels normal.

Less and less, he sleeps on the couch. Soon he finds he can’t really at all, unless he’s blinded himself with a day of writing code and caffeine-crashes so hard that he wakes up startled. It’s always the same. Danny waits for James to shut off the lights. He waits for the creaking bed to settle and beep of his phone’s charger. He waits for James to sigh, heavy and long, and a few minutes later, Danny unfurls himself from the couch.

He smokes a cigarette.

He brushes his teeth.

He changes into a sweatshirt or a jumper that doesn’t smell of smoke and he joins James in his bed.

Danny doesn’t know how to ask if this is okay. He doesn’t know if he wants to. He doesn’t want to risk an uncertain answer, because while James has never voiced objection to it, he’s also never said anything encouraging. Hell, they’ve never acknowledged it at all. In those late night hours, Danny is a spectre, following patterns he held once when his life was something that could be called that.

Only the creak of floorboards beneath his toes betrays his own reality, as Danny kneels to the bed and crawls along its length.

Again, just silence, slow breathing from the older man already occupying it. With a soft sigh he settles, and then nearly startles as James turns to his back and then to his side once more, but facing Danny this time.

“You know I always sleep better when you’re here,” he murmurs, voice sleep-heavy and warm.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Danny’s breath feels too loud and he tries to steady it, lips between his teeth until his heart begins to ease again. It doesn’t entirely, with James so near. Night after night, Danny has sighed warmth against James’ back. Night after night, he has relearned the smooth scars and curvature of muscles there, following with fingertips so careful they scarcely touch at all.

He laughs, a single sighed note.

“I don’t know what to do with the front of you,” Danny murmurs, and he brings his arms close against his own chest.

James lifts his eyes a moment in thought, purses his lips to try and hide his smile, and flicks his gaze to Danny again. “I suppose I could turn back around again.”

“No,” Danny laughs. “No, it’s - I’ll learn. Please stay.”

The agent hums and brings his own arms to rest as Danny’s are, before him and carefully folded. He watches Danny from this close, the closest they have been face to face in well over a month. He thinks of the evenings before all of this, when he would turn sleepy to Danny, and Danny would stretch like a cat before pressing close to him, demanding kisses.

James swallows.

“You dream, sometimes, and I never know if I should wake you,” he tells Danny softly.

There’s not enough pleasure in Danny’s expression to call it a smile. He shakes his head, and finding cool, soft cotton beneath his cheek, rubs his face a little against the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, but James’ lips part and his eyes soften, and Danny quiets his apology. “I wish you would.”

“Wake you?”

“Yes. I can’t breathe in them. Less and less, until I wake up in a panic, sweating everywhere,” Danny says. “Used to happen nearly every night. I’d stay up for days just so I wouldn’t have to feel it again.”

James watches him and flexes his fingers gently against the pillow.

“I dream I’m drowning in mine,” he says after a while, his voice low and almost quiet enough to be a whisper. “Ironically every time I wake after one, I crawl immediately into the shower and sit beneath the spray until it grows cold.”

Danny blinks, watches James press his lips together, close his eyes and settle his breathing. For a moment he wonders if perhaps the man has fallen asleep. He almost reaches out to touch his face when James speaks again, eyes still closed.

“Vesper Lynd,” he says, turning his face into the pillow. “My Alex Turner.”

A moment passes. Danny reminds himself to breathe. From anyone else, he’d take Alex’s name back from them, with anger and bitterness. It isn’t theirs to use. But both names sounds like a prayer when James says them, and as he rests the backs of his fingers against James’ cheek, Danny gives both names the space they deserve.

He shifts a little closer.

“Tell me about her,” Danny asks, and when James’ eyes open, he smiles, just a little.

“She was a hurricane,” James whispers, his eyes unfocused, somewhere in the middle distance between here and then. “Clever and sharp with her words. She had such courage, yet she was never fearless.” He swallows and blinks, lets his eyes set to Danny again. “You’re fearless,” he adds quietly.

He adjusts his position but he doesn’t move away from Danny, he doesn’t move enough to have his fingers leave his skin.

“She was unwilling to help me, but had no choice. We found common ground but… I loved her most when she was herself. When she spoke her mind regarding anything I did that was wrong, that was selfish or so in line with MI6 policy that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see on my own faults.”

Danny smiles at this, a little more. “She called you on your shit,” he asks, relieved when James’ sigh sounds almost like a laugh.

“To say the least.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“Ravishing, but she seemed to have no idea she was.”

He draws a deep breath and Danny strokes warmth into James’ cheek, without worry in this moment for what it means or how or why. Another small movement brings them close enough that their arms touch. Their brows touch. As close in body, now, as they are in their words and the unsteady tandem movements of their hearts.

Danny doesn’t speak. He listens.

“She was with me for one of the most important poker games of my life,” James laughs softly. “Made sure I didn’t spend beyond my means… found herself in far deeper than she had imagined, having to chase, fight, hide… resuscitate me in the car…”

Danny laughs, and James does too, something cathartic about being able to speak of Vesper like this for the first time to someone who genuinely cares. Not the psychologists at MI6 who needed information for their reports. Not M who would listen, perhaps, but had enough woes of her own to ever offer - and James would never ask. He feels like he can breathe, again, being able to speak of her so freely.

“I wanted to marry her. I nearly drowned in the damned Pacific when she said she agreed.”

He can almost see it - James open in his joy, relieved and elated both. His Vesper watching his pleasure with an arched brow and a secret smile. Danny lets his touch slip from James’ cheek and takes his hand instead, lacing their fingers together. Danny has always tended towards jealousy, despite his own propensity for promiscuity.

It’s more than the past tense - looming like storm clouds - that soothes the sensation from him now. He isn’t envious. Not at all. James’ delight resonates in him and the warmth of his smile feels wonderful. But the barometric pressure of this connection that they share, through these people they have loved, aches sadness through him just as deeply.

“She must have loved you very much,” Danny says, “to want a lifetime of hearing you snore.”

James laughs then, and Danny knows the taste of that laugh. He has made that sound so often, that helpless, metallic desperation that hums from his lungs up past his lips. James turns his head a little more and lifts their joined hands together so he can rub his thumb over and over Danny’s knuckles.

“God, she must have,” he sighs, licking his lips into his mouth and releasing them with a sigh, a click in his throat.

“We were in Venice,” he says. “And she left. Just for an afternoon, she wanted to run an errand and something… I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me. Paranoid bastard that I am, I followed. I followed her…”

James’ voice pitches a little and he squeezes Danny’s hand before shifting to lie on his back, still close but eyes to the ceiling now. Danny knows this feeling, too - the shame that comes with a memory that you cannot control, that you can barely look at yourself in the mirror when retelling, let alone someone else. He moves to rest his head against James’ shoulder.

“There was a fight. Someone had followed me, and she - she got trapped in an old shaft of an elevator, metal doors bent and damaged enough that they stuck. When the building began to sink, I -” James’ breath fills his lungs, enough that it should hurt, and he releases it slowly. “I watched her drown,” he whispers. “Trying to get that damn door open, she caught my hands and kissed them, as if to absolve me of every sin I should have no absolution for. My hands, that brought this upon her. If I’d not followed, for one bloody afternoon, if I’d let her do what she needed to do, trusted that she would come back to me, perhaps she would have.”

James closes his eyes, ignoring the tears that slip from their corners before he opens them again and clears his throat. “I killed the love of my life with my actions. Locked her in a box with every semblance of freedom and held her hand while she died. There’s no absolution for that.”

_Danny, please._

The heat springs sudden, scalding to Danny’s eyes and he shudders, sighing hard. Shaking his head, he thumbs away James’ tears and cups his cheek. He doesn’t let him turn away again. He brings him close instead.

“She gave it to you anyway.” 

James curls towards him, arms around Danny’s waist, legs drawn up painfully tight. He presses his brow to Danny’s chest and aches in silence against him. Danny’s fingers find his hair and he cradles him close, cheek against his head.

_I’m afraid._

He can no more wash away the blood that James sees on his own hands than James could wipe Danny’s sins clean. But perhaps it’s enough to know that another shares an understanding of this particular and terrible grief. Perhaps it’s enough that they see the other clearly, with open minds and open hearts, and neither flee. Perhaps it’s enough to know that however they regard themselves, in the other’s eyes they are not beyond forgiveness.

They are worthy of it.

“She loved you,” Danny whispers, the words curled tight in his throat. He squeezes his fingers a little, just enough to lift James’ head and nuzzle alongside his nose, as desperate now to comfort as he was to be comforted, as needful to be near. “And she knew you loved her.”

James draws a breath and holds it, eyes closed and hands holding Danny close. He wants to tell him that he understands, that he knows what it means to listen to the love of your life lose their breath, second by second. He wants to tell him that he understands. That the ache he saw in Danny the first time in the pub was one they shared.

He says nothing.

He releases his breath and lets his eyes open.

“You did right not leaving him,” he tells Danny softly. “He knows you stayed. He loved you.”

Danny’s body jerks sharply when the tears spill hot from his eyes, a harsh breath sighed hard against James’ hair. He shakes his head. A sound dies in his throat.

“He was afraid,” he whispers.

“And she,” James says, and when his fingernails curve against Danny’s sweatshirt enough that he can feel them against his skin beneath, goosebumps spill in their wake. “How could they be anything else?”

“But how much worse it would be to go alone...”

“Rather than know someone’s there beside you. Someone who loves you.”

Danny’s body curls, muscles snapping tight with sparks of pain that pours into his weak whisper. “I never wanted to hurt him.”

“I never meant to hurt her.”

Danny bends a leg over James’ own. He tightens his arms around him and curls his fingers in his hair. Their bodies press so close together there’s hardly space for them to breathe. It’s so similar to the fear with which they both live, so similar to the suffocating guilt and smothering shame resonating from the ones they loved losing beat by beat the movement of their hearts.

But in that moment of drowning, asphyxiating in a mourning perhaps no other in the world can understand, the other’s heart beats strong against their own. Danny ducks his head and parts his lips against James’ brow. He lets his breath be felt, as James’ matches its pace against his throat. Numb fingers spread to rub James’ back and ease the twitch of muscles beneath his skin. James presses his lips against Danny’s shoulder, and Danny hushes him softly, and in doing so soothes himself in turn.

“Thank you,” Danny finally whispers, nosing gently through James’ hair. “Thank you for telling me.”

James says nothing, accepts the words with a shuddered sigh and another soft kiss to Danny’s shoulder. He doesn’t want this to become prurient, an admission leading to one falling into the other to be sexually absolved. No. Both of them are exhausted, emotionally tattered, attuned to the other’s pain. Both need the closeness and the comfort, nothing more.

James reaches to pull the blanket higher up over both of them, keeping them warm as slowly, carefully, they relearn each other again.

His fingers tangle in Danny’s curls, gently pulling them straight and stroking the bouncing bend of them as they're released again. He scrapes dull nails against Danny’s scalp. He turns his nose against Danny’s neck and just breathes against him, so relieved to have him near again.

Every movement is met by a fidget or a squirm, but not away from James. He moves nearer, seeking more, another touch, another breath. Danny is constant motion - even deep in his work he rocks his leg or curls his toes. James doesn’t try to keep him still. He lets his hands follow every twist and shiver, each sign of stubborn life still clung to no matter how hard the storm around them roils.

Each night, Danny hoped that James would turn to him and grab him close. Each night before now, Danny knew he’d reject this closeness, no matter how much he’s ached for it. And now that both have bled dry their wounds - kept protected and hidden despite the gouts of pain from within - each touch becomes like medicine. Each movement together smooths their self-inflicted savagery.

 _I believe you_ , James whispers, with his hands in Danny’s hair.

 _I trust you_ , Danny answers, when his fingers curl down James’ back.

Their noses brush together but neither let their lips touch. This isn’t that, yet. Not now, not like this. It may not ever be that again, both know, but it hardly matters when the intimacy they’ve found means so much more. Needs met that neither ever imagined would be. Understanding reached over something the world outside of them could never accept.

Danny’s heel presses to James’ calf and he makes a little sound when James tugs his curls again. He touches with gentle fingertips along the greying scruff grown stiff along James’ jaw. A deep breath pushes Danny’s skinny body against James’ own and he sighs, trembling. It almost sounds like a laugh.

“I missed you.”

Missing someone is hardly distance, though it can play a part sometimes. Missing someone is not having them there, not having them listen and understand, not having them acknowledge you at all. Missing someone is seeing them right there and knowing you cannot touch them, cannot hold them close, can do little more than pass them by, phantom to phantom.

“I missed you,” James tells him. He feels as though his limbs are warm again, for the first time in weeks. He feels as though his heart doesn’t have to ache for the first time in years, and that when it does someone will be there to soothe it again.

He feels real to someone for the first time in his life.

No more secrets. No more half-truths and gaslighting. Not to the other, never again. James spreads a hand against Danny’s cheek and strokes beneath his eye, over the hair above his ear, over the ear itself, ticklish and warm.

He loves him, so achingly in that moment.

Danny’s nose wrinkles, smile appearing in a moment and then softening again when James’ fingers find the spot just beneath his ear where he’s ticklish. The memory that rises from the tightening in his stomach is allowed to play, silver-blue eyes and inquisitive touches, and when it fades Danny sighs relief. He won’t ever lose Alex. He wouldn’t want to, but James’ own memories offer confirmation and consolation both.

The loss doesn’t go away. It can’t be forgotten or erased. But it can change shape, sometimes digging sharp as a blade, but more often a familiar dull ache like an old injury healed over. They can survive. They are allowed that. And for better or worse, they won’t lose what’s left of the ones they’ve loved for doing so.

That is absolution.

That is forgiveness.

When Danny straightens his legs to stretch, James moves with him. Rolling to his back, Danny smiles as James curls against his side. He keeps an arm beneath James’ head and fingers in his hair. He traces the curvature of his arm when James rests his hand over Danny’s heart. Neither can sleep, but they find their rest together like this. Touching and breathing. Surviving and find a way to live.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Danny says, his smile lifting his eyes as James lifts his gaze. “Bond, is it?”

“James Bond,” he replies, and both snort gently at the official and practiced introduction. He noses softly against Danny’s shoulder and smiles. “I was born in Scotland. My parents did die when I was young. All of that was true.”

“Did you enjoy traveling at least?”

“As much as a petulant teenager could,” James replies, closing his eyes and spreading his fingers against Danny’s shirt. “I loved Paris.”

“Spoiled kid,” Danny laughs.

“Awfully,” James agrees, smiling against him.

“Why there in particular?”

“It’s where I lost my virginity,” James says, watching as Danny spreads a hand across his face to hide his laugh. “And it’s a beautiful city, besides.”

“And the military?”

“True.”

Danny hums a little, pleased. 

Danny tilts his head to make space for James to lay higher, brow against his temple and nose against his cheek. His system’s been restarted and synced with another. The spite that drove Danny to misery for what James did seems all at once erased, and tighter programs put in its place. And the nagging buzz of constant paranoia is quieter than Danny ever remembers it having been, since Alex, since the Society, since the sound of his father returning from work made him unable to breathe.

His body hums quietly now. Danny turns to let his lips rest parted against James’ brow.

“I don’t think I’ve said thank you,” he murmurs.

“I can’t imagine why you would.”

“Fair,” Danny says, grinning crooked when James huffs a laugh. “Thank you,” he says, “for not leaving me to rot down there for the rest of my life.”

“You get to do it here instead, it seems.”

“At least you let me smoke,” snorts Danny.

“And sleep in a bed,” James adds, enjoying the warm laugh that pulls from Danny though both know it is far from a funny fantasy. He would hardly have lasted in MI6. Not even from outright cruelty, but from lack of humanity.

Danny squirms a little and James shifts to let him move before settling again. He thinks back to that day, to Danny’s disgust with him and fear of everyone else, to the smug look Adler had worn in threatening the young man. He thinks back to how he stood outside the door and called in every favor he had, with every department, to allow this boy into his custody. 

He thinks of M sneering that his job is not to adopt strays.

He thinks of Danny's coldness towards him for weeks.

He knows that he does not regret a moment, not one, because Danny is here now. He is safe. He is healing, and helping James do the same.

How long they’ll have, James doesn’t know. M’s already thin patience will wear thinner still, and James knows he’ll have to go afield again. They’ll take Danny into holding. They will treat him as they see him - less than human, a useful tool at best or scum at worst. And James promises, with nothing more than a sigh against Danny’s cheek, that he will come and get him again, to take him home and ensure he knows that he matters.

Not as a device.

Not as an informant.

Not as a whipping boy.

As Danny Holt, a bright young man who smokes too much and snorts when he laughs, with somber eyes and a gentle heart.

Until then, James will hold him, for as long as possible, and in whatever way Danny allows. He does now, when James wraps an arm over his waist to turn them both to facing. With a small sound, Danny tucks his head beneath James’ chin, and lets himself be small. His breath slows and his body relaxes. James can feel that Danny too has been pulled tight to the point of breaking over the last weeks, and he rubs his palm slowly over every tremor of tired muscle and every shiver that relaxes him. With a deeper breath, Danny seems to have slipped to sleep, before he speaks, softly.

“I have so many questions,” he murmurs, and James hums. “But one I need to know.”

“Anything.”

“Whatever the answer,” Danny says, “I’m not upset. I won’t be upset, I just need to know - honestly, truthfully.”

“Anything.” The word stirs Danny’s hair.

“The way we were before,” he asks. “Was it all just part of the job?”

For a moment, James considers. He knows himself well enough to understand when he pushes himself to something. He knows just as well when something genuinely comes on its own. 

He read the report and his lips bent in a snarl of immediate distaste - no, disgust towards the boy responsible for such an unnecessary death. He watched Danny from the pub and wondered if he were truly capable of such callous cruelty. He spoke to him, and charmed him and teased him, and found himself drawn to him. And then it all simply unfurled. He invited Danny to dinner, invited him home, invited him to bed and made him breakfast the next morning, and he could not hate him.

“No,” James tells him, stroking his thumbs against Danny's back in slow, gentle touches. “At first, perhaps,” he allows, “but not since the breakfast we shared. Not since the moment you left to retrieve something from your flat and I realized I wanted you to come back. Not to report on or watch, but to hold and breathe against and make you smile.”

Danny nods, nestling closer, grateful for the honesty no matter how far removed they seem from all that now. The first time they fucked, it had been a punishment - wanted by Danny and gladly given by James. But when both purged themselves of their own anger in that way, left sweaty and sticky and aching, something shifted. Danny didn’t want to just limp away into the night. James wanted him to stay. Danny felt the seismic shift between them without recognizing just how great the fault line over which he balanced, and he breathes easier knowing that James felt that movement too.

“I’ll try to smile more,” Danny tells him, managing a little one when James rests his cheek against Danny’s brow.

“When you can,” James says, and with this allowance, Danny finally slips into sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If we don’t count the time I spend being interrogated, and we don’t count my coming onto the terrace to smoke, I’ve been outside a total of eight minutes in the last two months. Door to car, car to door, and back again. It’ll be an even ten minutes when the third month is over. Ninety-nine point nine percent of my time will have been inside - either here, or MI6,” Danny says. “Can’t we go somewhere?" ___

Only when they have left nothing hidden between them does Danny truly start to rebuild himself. This isn’t the life he imagined for himself, held in captivity by a force he loathes, but it’s surprisingly close to the life he wanted. Mornings waking up alongside someone he cares about, breakfasts shared before they separate to work. Conversation and consideration, and little touches to reassure the other of their reality to the other, when so often their existence seems surreal in its confinement.

It’s not what he imagined he’d have with Alex. Not even what he’d imagined he’d have with James in those first few weeks together. But it’s close enough and comfortable enough, and after everything, Danny’s goddamn grateful for that.

_$ mkdir habits  
$ cd habits  
/Users/danny/habits  
$ touch daily.txt  
$ cat daily.txt  
smoke  
bathroom  
dress  
breakfast  
smoke  
work  
smoke  
dinner  
smoke  
bathroom  
sleep  
$ cat daily.txt | cat weekly.txt | cat monthly.txt _

He changes the concatenation now and then. Sometimes he adds in more cigarettes. Sometimes he skips dressing altogether and simply sits around in his pants. Sometimes he replaces sleep with work and sometimes the other way around.

But overall, the basic build is stable. Consistent. Fucking predictable, which isn’t the worst thing in the world - God bloody knows it isn’t - but neither is it particularly exciting. He wonders often how James can stand it, being stuck here with him day in and day out.

The older man never seems to mind, of course, but in prodding him for more stories of his field work, a slow creep of guilt starts to settle over Danny. He is genuinely amazed by what James has experienced. Why the hell would a man like that be happy trapped in his own flat, babysitting a boy half his age who doesn’t even speak for half the day because he’s deep in his code?

“I could go back, you know. For a little while. Just to give you a break,” Danny says, apropos of nothing but his own thoughts. James stops on his passage through the flat, and watches Danny through the glass door to where he stands on the terrace. Arm folded across his middle, thumbnail catching against his cigarette over and over. Danny presses the filter between his lips, brow furrowing, and smoke greys his words. “Vauxhall Cross. I’m not - it isn’t that I don’t want to be here. I do, I like being here with you, but,” he says, sighing. “It isn’t fair to you, is it?”

James blinks. “How so?”

“You must be bored out of your mind, staying home when you could be -” Danny shrugs, an exaggerated gesture, and sets the filter between his lips again. It’s his third in a row this morning. “Anywhere else.”

“I suppose I could be anywhere else,” James agrees, moving to lean against the doorframe as he watches Danny and Danny watches London. “But it would hardly be with such good company.”

Danny snorts. “Sod off.”

James watches him a moment more before moving to join him in the terrace. There have been days where he has had to leave the flat for work, for errands, for assignments that took him overseas and pushed him up against the usual mortal dangers. In that time, other operatives came to stay and watch over Danny. _Someone coming by to change the litter for your bloody stray_ , as M referred to it. And though he hardly imagines anything untoward happened in his time away, every time he returns Danny follows him a bit closer, presses himself smaller against James. 

Vauxhall Cross would do more damage than good, undoing how far Danny has come in settling into and discovering who he is. It would undermine wholeness and break him into pieces for their perusal.

“Do you want me to go?”

“No.”

“But you want something.”

James’ smile is teasing, warm, and Danny bites his lip with a sigh before releasing it. His jaw works, running a search for the right words, thumbnail keeping tempo against his cigarette. He turns to rest his back against the railing, watching James watch him.

“It’s four steps between the door of your building and the car they send to get me. Roughly a dozen between the car dropping me off and the back door of MI6. Call it thirty steps total that I’m outside, back and forth. Each step is approximately a second long. They brought me in three times a week for the first month. Once a week for the second,” he says, shaking his head.

James rests his head against his arm, pressed to the doorway, and listens.

“If we don’t count the time I spend being interrogated, and we don’t count my coming onto the terrace to smoke, I’ve been outside a total of eight minutes in the last two months. Door to car, car to door, and back again. It’ll be an even ten minutes when the third month is over. Ninety-nine point nine percent of my time will have been inside - either here, or MI6,” Danny says.

“They’ll keep you shut up completely if you’re there.”

“They can’t do that. I signed the papers saying I’d snitch for them if they didn’t press charges. They can’t keep me, legally.”

“No,” James agrees. “Legally, they can’t.”

The meaning is clear beneath his words and Danny offers a small smile, almost an apology. He bites his lip again. James’ brow raises, awaiting the question that he knows is coming.

“Can’t we go somewhere? You and me, not me alone. You know I won’t run. I couldn’t outrun you if I tried,” he adds, smile curved around his cigarette as he drags again. “Even just to Albert Bridge. Ten minutes each way, we’ll have tripled three months of time for me,” he grins, crooked and small, and it falters a little, cheeks warming as he pleads. “I’d take going to the bloody corner shop and back if that’s all I can have.”

James regards him, cocks his head and narrows his eyes. Danny stands before him healthy and strong, lithe and beautiful and utterly, desperately bored. He watches Danny suck in another deep breath of smoke before he flicks the filter over the edge of the balcony.

“Shall we go dancing, then?” James asks him.

Danny’s eyes widen. James doesn’t disappear. The words linger. This isn’t a dream and James isn’t gently apologizing to him that _no, I’m sorry, I’m under strict orders_ or whatever the fuck. Of course he’s not, because if there’s one man willing to flaunt stupid rules with as much pleasure as Danny takes in doing so, it’s James.

“Yes,” Danny says. He doesn’t ask where or when or anything at all. He laughs, burying his face in his hands, and lets loose a long, low sound of relief into his palms. “Yes, please. Yes. Can we?”

“This evening,” James offers. “If you know a place?”

“I know a place,” Danny laughs. He feels like a child who was just told he could spend his savings in a candy store. Just told he could fly with the paper wings he made and not fall. “I know a few.”

“Good,” James smiles. “I’ll trust you to lead, then.”

Not just a walk to the corner and back. Not just a walk to the bridge. A proper night out, where there’s music and there’s people who are young and alive. Where there’s drinks and food and dancing and James.

Danny spreads his fingers across his cheeks, and finds them warmed hot against his fingertips. All of that, and James. Not a babysitter. Not a bodyguard. They are so much more than the roles assigned to them by others. They are so much more to each other than anyone realizes.

Just because a file’s renamed doesn’t change its content.

“God, my heart’s racing. We’re going to get there and I’ll be so tired from all the excitement that I’ll want to come back,” Danny laughs, nose wrinkling. He steps towards the flat again but stops short, just before James. Trembling fingers smooth the lapels of his jacket once, twice, and Danny pushes to his toes as he slides his arms around James’ neck and buries his face against his shoulder. “Thank you.”

James wraps his arms around Danny’s middle and holds him, turning his head against the young man so beautiful and alive and excited for something as little as going out for an evening. He can’t blame him. The boredom would have done him in long ago if he had been set to house arrest.

He kisses against the wild curls that shift in the breeze and strokes them from Danny’s face.

“If you want to come back, then we’ll come back,” he says. “Though you will miss out on seeing me attempt to dance to modern music then.”

“Will you?” Danny grins, nose wrinkling as he turns to watch him.

“Not if we leave early.”

“But if we stay,” laughs Danny. James searches between his eyes, bright blue and narrowed by the width of his smile.

“I would be hard pressed to pass up an opportunity to dance with you.”

When Danny’s lips part in gentle surprise, they click. They’re so close their noses brush, so near they can taste the tea and tobacco from the other’s breath. Neither have dared to cross the carefully maintained, if thin, barrier between them, but Danny comes precariously close when he nuzzles alongside James’ nose and their lips nearly brush.

“Presumptuous,” he grins, before lowering to his heels and letting his arms slide free, to make his way back inside.

James laughs, a soft and gentle sound, and doesn’t follow him. When he leaves the balcony, James makes his way to his study.

\---

They walk, though James offers to pay for a cab, and Danny damn near bounces along the sidewalk as they do. He casts his eyes up to the sky, around them, down every alley. It’s almost as though he has never been out of the house before at all. James thinks of a new puppy allowed to explore for the first time. He does nothing at all to stop Danny enjoying himself. He watches and smiles and lets his own heart feel lighter for it.

After a while, James follows Danny’s navigation through the twists and turns of the London club scene. They pass some clubs without even stopping, others Danny assesses before changing his mind. What the criteria is for his selection, James couldn’t guess, but he follows, as he has promised, Danny’s lead to where he chooses.

Danny shut off his computer hours before, committed wholeheartedly to the act and art of _going out_. Laying out all his clothes across the bed, he’d spent an entirely self-indulgent amount of time trying things on, cursing at them, prying them off again, and finally going to shower. When he emerged, he took up a striped t-shirt - red and black of varying widths - and a pair of jeans. He declared that he’d definitely forget to pick up his blazer at the end of the night, a garish plaid thing, but shrugged into it anyway. Sneakers and a flimsy scarf finished the look and James noted that he hadn’t shaved.

“I already look thirteen,” Danny complained.

It was a fascinating amount of work for something so similar to what he wears about each day anyway, but James was happy to watch Danny’s youthful preening, full of a vigor and excitement he’d not seen since before this all began. And it does make a difference, at least from seeing Danny buried in a hoodie and a nest of blankets. Mismatched colors and clashing patterns that somehow fit together. Finally, when the room was clear of its whirling dervish, James settled into a dark grey t-shirt over black trousers, a smart jacket atop.

“Look at you,” Danny declared, grinning. “You’ll have to fight the lads off with a stick.”

“I think I’ll manage.”

“It’s a good look for someone your age. Very handsome.”

James gamely chose not to reply to that.

It’s nearly an hour’s walk before Danny finds what he’s looking for, an enormous warehouse-style structure beneath which the ground seems to move from the bass inside. No name on the outside. No address. Two particularly large bouncers outside that James sizes up on instinct. There’s a substantial line waiting to get in, beautiful young things of any and all genders, and Danny chews the side of his nail in thought before turning to James.

“Can I try something?” He asks.

“That’s a very broad question.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work,” Danny admits. “It’s been a long bloody time. Wait for me?”

“Where are you -”

Danny is off before James can finish his sentence, and he watches him as he skips up the steps to the bouncers. There’s a terse instant, as much from those in line as from the bouncers, but it passes a beat later with a laugh. Danny is embraced brusquely, patting the shoulder of the enormous man, and after a quick chat, he glances to James and tilts his head towards the club.

James goes, hands in his pockets and deliberately ignoring the groans and some interested sounds from the line he passes. He can feel eyes on him, that he is used to, but he is not used to being walked into a club, skipping the line. He’s used to being the one to lead someone into a restaurant that no one else can get a reservation at, or to a helicopter to fly them to another country for breakfast.

This is novel.

He nods to the bouncer as he passes and the man nods back, turning to the line with a frown when more sounds of displeasure arise as Danny and James are allowed in and the rest of them wait.

Within, James can barely hear himself think, can barely see a foot in front of him with the way the lights are strobing over the mass of bodies that undulate within the huge open space. He feels a tug against his wrist and Danny grins at him, pulling him towards the small section that serves as the cloakroom. He shrugs off his blazer and passes it over, holding the little plastic number between his teeth as he reaches for James’ jacket to add to the pile.

Then he slips his fingers between James’ and leads him to the floor.

Danny has to shout to speak and the rattle of his rarely-used vocal cords feels almost obscenely good.

“I used to bring Frank - the bouncer out front - I used to bring him weed,” Danny says, shaking his head with a laugh as James regards him dryly. “Not for him,” Danny clarifies. “For his mum. Cancer. Bloody hell,” he exclaims as a flash of light blinds them both.

When the spots clear, they’re replaced by a movement so sinuous and solid that the floor appears to be one whole creature undulating in time with the dense thud of bass. There are men among the crowd closer to James’ age, but relatively few. Overwhelmingly those inside are young, lithe, linen-limbed and beautiful and nearly bare. The heat of lights, movement, bodies pressed tight together fills the room with a musky humidity.

Danny’s not had a proper drink in weeks and he already feels drunk.

He can already feel his body twisting in time with the music, against his own volition, he would say, if it wasn’t so bloody welcome. He lifts their joined hands over his head and leads James deeper into the crowd. His steps sync up once more with the electricity that runs through the people that share the floor together. He works expertly through them, between them, around them, leading James towards the very center and heartbeat of the place.

When he lets him go it is only to move his arms, swaying and turning, wrists loose and fingers splayed. Danny’s eyes roll closed and he tilts his head back and he lets the music take him. For a moment, nothing exists. Not his body, not this place, not the shit in his life and the exhaustion he must return to. Not even James. In that moment, Danny floats only on sound until he opens his lungs to it, his vessels and bones to it and becomes the sound entirely.

Danny opens his eyes again and laughs, the sound drowned out, and moves to the beat, predicting it before it comes, turning just so, shifting just enough to make it look as though he has been dancing to this song in this place his entire life.

James cannot take his eyes off of him.

Nor, he finds, can he stay still. This is nothing like the elegant and graceful dances based on rules, partner to partner. This is a wild grace, a fever akin to ancient dances of Aztecs and Greeks, taken entirely by the music and allowed to be conduits for something ethereal. He moves as he feels he can, without thinking too much, without trying to imitate anyone around him - no one moves the same way.

Their eyes catch and James’ breath leaves him. This is not the wounded bird he gathered close to him for so short a time. This is not the helpless creature crushed beneath the weight of his own sins. No longer the boy buried seven blankets deep for days at a time and lit pallid by his screen, no longer the eye-rolling youth questioned until he gives powers far greater than himself the tears they seem to desire.

This is the Danny that James has ached to know, bright and spirited and beautiful. Every jerk of limbs that would seem as awkward as Danny once dismissed his dancing now flow together seamless, his very pulse seemingly synced to every beat and counterbeat and crescendo and drop of music. He plummets downward and rises up. He spins in place and claps sharp. Hair spilling oil black between his fingers when he tugs his curls straight, Danny laughs as he lets his eyes close.

Hands find his hips and Danny shivers, spine twisting down into the sway of his hips. Someone else drawn into his whirlwind, pressed firm against him from behind. Bolts of lightning chain brightly through his body as Danny and whomever has hold of him spark together. He lets himself be held. Lets himself be touched. Welcomes every heartbeat rising through the floor and resonating in their chests, the warmth of breath like summer wind against his ear.

He doesn’t look away from James.

Gaze hooded, lips apart, he splays his hands over the arms that ensnare him now but it isn’t some stranger Danny imagines. It’s James who holds him. James who lays claim to him. James’ body and hands and movement meeting primal with his own, and Danny reaches for him before he can be whisked away, fingers fanning to draw him near.

James moves without meaning to, perhaps, without thinking to, certainly. Fingers catching Danny’s and immediately slipping them through his own as one would in a hold for ballroom. But neither move that way, not here. James merely extricates his boy - and he is _his_ \- and pulls him near, ducking his head so that his lips press just against the tip of Danny’s nose, so that they can press close and shift and twist together.

Slowly, they learn the other’s rhythm. Slowly, when Danny moves, James follows. When James opens himself up, Danny turns back against him and slinks a hand back to grasp his hair.

He is beautiful. Lithe and alive and lovely. James slips his hands against his hips and presses his cheek against Danny’s and closes his eyes and moves with him. They don’t step, they hardly have to. They jump when the beat dictates it, rub together when it slows. James breathes when Danny does, he turns his head, eyes closed, blindly seeking against the panting little wisps against his neck.

James’ hands settle at the V of Danny’s hips, fingers splayed and teasing there, deliberately not seeking. He smiles as Danny’s hands rest over his own, press them lower, arching his glorious body up to move James’ hands when his own don’t do the job. Danny’s shirt catches against James’ wrists, hands brought to rest on the clenching muscles of his bare belly, already slick with sweat.

When Danny closes his eyes, smile so wide his face hurts, the spill of lights across his lids glints like starlight, like the city sparkling from James’ flat. Like the flash of their skin in the glass on the first night they shared together, like the static-spark caress of hands and mouths bursting fireworks beneath their skin. An understanding made physical, bodies moving in time together without either needing to say a bloody word.

He shoves James’ hands away from his stomach, and turns sharp, kicking up a foot and pitching his hands into the air. James snares him close again and Danny goes, though James can scarcely contain the wild rhythm of Danny’s newfound freedom. Beat by beat, thump by thump, light by flashing light that paints them brightly colored and luminous, the others around them fade to nothing more than shadow and movement.

Danny brings his arms down to lay lanky over James’ shoulders. Their foreheads touch, skin damp and hair clinging to their brows. It’s safe like this to touch, to press, to shiver and arch closer when their bodies meet flush. The slow grind of their hips is a symptom of the music. Danny’s fingers in James’ hair are merely ensuring he doesn’t slip. It’s an excuse both are willing to enjoy. It’s an explanation if the music stops and their connection does too.

They’re only dancing.

Aren’t they?

The song seamlessly changes to another and they shift their pace to match. This song is slower, the bass drawing long tugs enough to pull their hearts out of sync again and again instead of the pulsing heat of the song before. James moves his hips, back and forth, side to side, hands settling on Danny’s to coax him to move the same way. He lets his thumbs slip beneath the hem of Danny’s damp shirt but nothing more. He does not grope, he does not grasp. He grins when he feels the whine when he cannot hear it, Danny demanding more and petulant about it.

“I would give the world to kiss you right now,” James whispers, knowing Danny won’t hear, knowing that in the strobing lights he will not read his lips. He closes his eyes again and straightens his body from the lax curve he had held, pulling Danny close against him, letting his hands slip to the graceful curve of his ass, to the taut thighs that tremble, now, with adrenaline and pleasure. Danny’s mouth presses open and breathless against James’ cheek, scruff rough against his lips.

For the first time in months, he feels alive.

For the first time in his life, he feels safe.

And when he slips sinuous downward and away, coiling serpentine from the toss of his head to the twist of his hips, James lets him move. The distance between them only pulls stronger the threads of desire binding tight around them. Not an escape, but a tease, their eyes lifting to meet before Danny grins and turns away again.

He is caught every time he starts to get swept away.

He is held every time the distance between them grows too wide.

He goes willingly, every time, back to James’ arms to coil and grind and twine their bodies tight. The agreements made before they left the flat - no drugs, drinking is fine, no disappearing - hardly matter. Danny doesn’t want to be anywhere else in the world but pressed against James, surrounded by shimmering light and twisting bodies and shuddering bass.

And then he wriggles free again, takes the steps necessary for James to follow and allows himself to twist free again. Over and over, closer and closer to the door before Danny is wheeled in entirely, and presses his fingers to James’ lips that rest parted so close to his own. Danny can barely breathe, already exhausted after weeks, months, of not being on the scene. His eyes are hooded, lips and cheeks hot, yet he shakes his head, unfolds one finger then another then the third from James’ lips and leads him on to the cloakroom, tugging their little number from his pocket.

They take a cab home.

They take the elevator up.

James doesn’t know what time it is, nor does he care. His entire being is wired, pulsing still in time to a beat that Danny exudes and to which he is entirely attuned. He follows Danny to the kitchen, he cares little for removing his coat or shoes, he just wants to keep Danny in his sights, hair sweaty and messy, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He watches Danny push to his toes to reach the bottle of scotch and uncork it, tipping a few fingers into one of the mugs from their breakfast that morning, still unwashed on the counter.

“What are you doing?” James asks, voice trembling on a laugh.

Danny’s gaze lifts, eyes black with pupil but for a corona of blue. His shirt clings to him, rumpled and damp. His curls spill sweat-soaked against his cheeks. He tilts back his head and swallows the scotch with one jerk of his throat and a hiss, fingers pressed against his lips to ease the burn.

“Giving myself an excuse,” he says, and a single step closes the distance needed to curl his arms around James’ neck and press their mouths together.

James grasps him by the waist as he finds the wall with his shoulders, Danny’s body as firm against his own as they’d been when drawn together on the dancefloor. The scotch still stings hot on his tongue as Danny licks it into James’ mouth kisses him deeper still. Their pulse beats a faster tempo than any in the club, the hum of their bodies more resonant than any bass. James drops his hands to grasp Danny by his thighs, and Danny pushes up to his toes as their kiss parts and he moans.

“God I’ve missed you,” James breathes, turning his kiss against Danny’s jaw, seeking out the familiar taste and smell of him, the slickness of his sweat, the warmth of his body. He is untameable and uncatchable, like a cat, he must come on his own and when he does -

“I’m here,” Danny replies, clinging harder to James’ shirt until the agent steps closer and with a teasing knee between Danny’s legs, hoists him up by the hips and holds him closer still. Mouths meet in a hot press and devouring once more, and James allows Danny to take anything he wants. Everything he wants. He opens himself entirely to the young man in his arms who holds him so surely in the palm of his hand. He lets Danny slip free when he wriggles and laughs, but he doesn’t step back. Not again.

With fingers that shake from the surge of energy between them, Danny pushes his hands beneath James’ shirt, palms spreading over firm flat belly and skimming upward over sweat-damp hot skin. His fingernails curl against James’ chest hair and James’s teeth clench, before they sink to another kiss and Danny grasps James by his belt, dragging him further into the flat.

They dance to music of their own making. Skin claps against skin when James pulls Danny hard against him. Their kisses click and they breathe rhythm beneath that speeding tempo. Moans punctuate their passion, hips curling in the crescendo of another rough kiss. Frantic but controlled, moved by love and lust and desperate need, too long suppressed, too long denied, too long excused and avoided and now crashing beautifully to a head.

James presses Danny back onto the mattress when it comes up behind his knees and he spills across it laughing. Head tilted aside, the too-near sound of James’ mouth against his ear arches his entire body in an uncontrolled undulation. Bony hips shove upward and their cocks stroke against the friction of the other’s trousers. Danny turns, teasing, spiralling his body away with a laugh and watching over his shoulder as James shoves his shirt up and kisses down the long line of his spine.

Danny drops his own hand between his legs and rubs hard as James touches him. He arches back and draws up his knees, ducks his head and laughs as he’s kissed against the back of his neck, shirt ridden up fully, now, caught beneath his arms. James worships him with kisses now as he had before, entirely devoted, damn near devout in his adoration. Danny lifts his arms and James peels the shirt away, slipping to rest against Danny’s back, his arms stretched above his head, fingers clenching and releasing, like a cat’s paws in pleasure.

Roughened hands find his belt, powerful legs are set to either side of Danny’s own as James undoes his belt and doesn’t bother to slip it free before working open the button on his pants and the fly, pushing his fingers into the warm and welcome space between thin cotton and fevered skin. Danny’s cock throbs twitching against James’ hands. His hips lift from the bed to push back against James’ weight atop him, rocking in a shared rhythm that both know no one else in the world can hear.

When James sucks a hard kiss against Danny’s shoulder, Danny throws his head back and moans. Every beat drives his cock against James’ hands, every counterbeat bends his ass against James’ length rubbing heavy with need. They create lights flashing for the other now, with each breath and shiver, each moan and touch and grind. Danny’s tight jeans keep James’ hands against him, stroking Danny’s cock hard against his own belly, stretching his pants, working free beads of slick that smooth their movement.

Danny doesn’t want to be used now, not like before. He doesn’t want to be fucked to forget. He doesn’t want to play pretend. This is something else entirely, no secrets or half-truths to cloud their connection.

“Kiss me,” Danny pleads. “Please.”

James does. Against his neck, against his jaw, to his cheek. His hands slip free of Danny’s pants and he lifts himself enough for the young man to turn. Soft kisses against his cheek once more, to the corner of his mouth and to his lips, James holding gently to Danny’s chin to relish this kiss with him, hard-won and long-awaited.

He feels like he’s being ignited from within - he can barely breathe.

Lips parted, noses nuzzling together, they work their hands between themselves to peel layers of clothes away. James’ shirt is tossed high enough that it lands on the door, to the amusement of them both. Their trousers and pants are squirmed from as their lips find each other again and again. Bare, pressed near and rocking shamelessly together, James holds Danny still once more to kiss him again, eyes just grey slits beneath half-closed lids, breath a warm tickle against stubble and skin.

The song changes. They hover for a moment in quiet, kiss sweeping smoothly together. Danny’s fingers flutter to rest on James’ cheek; he runs the other through his hair. Their lips part but their gaze holds, before their tempo lifts again and Danny bends his head back with a laugh, fingers splayed across his face.

Danny lets himself be moved, twisted, his lips claimed, his body kept in place by insistent thrusts and a body bigger than his own, but never once does James press against his motions enough to stop them, never once is Danny held so hard he can’t move. He bucks his hips and digs his heels into the bed. He slings his leg over James’ hip and slides it down slow to twine their limbs together.

He pulls James’ hair and bites his lips and embraces him with skinny arms and shaking thighs. Rutting with abandon against the other’s belly, hip, groin, they moan into the other’s mouth and swallow the sound with consuming kisses. And when Danny’s body surges upward, James follows his lead. He rolls to his back and Danny straddles him, lean body bent and cocks thrusting together as his back bends and he sinks into James’ kiss again.

Hands seek over his skin, nails occasionally drawing marks against Danny’s back when he twists his hips a certain way, when his kiss lingers a little too long, when his hair falls into his face and he brings a hand up to swipe it back. He rocks against James until he moans, shivering and aching, lips wet and parted and body begging for more.

He’s close.

James knows that sweet expression so well.

His hands grip against Danny’s hair and James pushes himself near to sitting to hold him closer, welcoming, allowing, begging in his own right.

He would have Danny in every way but this in particular he has ached for and missed. He recognizes the movements of Danny’s body to be the same as when he danced. The deep bend of his back and the snap of his hips. The way he grasps his own hair and lifts his eyes skyward before they flutter closed with a breathless moan. Control and abandon in equal parts, a wild spirit let loose from the confines of himself and others and the world itself.

Danny slicks James’ cock with spit, stroking him against his entrance. Glistening fluid spills clear down his shaft as he works himself back, brow creased and reddened lips wide in a ring of pain and pleasure both. It’s unwise, but they’ve always been. Risky, but they’ve never feared that. It’s wonderful, and enough to make the rest unworthy of their attention, when both have fought against themselves and each other and the world to have it.

Danny gasps James’ name when James slips inside him, and there’s never been a song to which James’ body has responded so immediately as this.

He holds against Danny as the young man works himself down, deeper and deeper against James. He doesn’t rush him, doesn’t push - he parts his lips in silent enjoyment and lets himself take in Danny entirely. He shivers, bottom lip between his teeth pressed pale before he releases it, marks of sharp teeth in stark relief before it floods with blood again and they go away.

James murmurs his name and Danny laughs, ducking his head and tickling James’ cheek with the long curls that hang against it. A rough hand comes up to tug the strands away, holding tight to them to gently arch Danny deeper, smiling when Danny’s fingers immediately circle his own cock to hold back his orgasm.

He is exquisite.

He is beautiful.

Danny’s breath spill moaning as he takes James entirely inside him. Buried against James’ throat, every little gasp echoes the movement of their bodies together. Hips rise and fall in counterpoint. Friction and heat fire their hearts to racing. Danny hisses through his teeth as he holds his cock tighter to keep release at bay and his fingernails curl into James’ shoulder.

His body jerks in movements that would seem unsteady in anyone else. In Danny, they are intentional, a complicated wonder of intuition giving way to fluid movement. Small tugs against James’ cock, the ring of muscle around him gripping tight. Long ones stroking deep. Clumsy kisses smeared against James’ beard as he seeks for his lips and squeezes his own against them, eyes closed, lashes damp, heart pounding so swiftly it’s almost erratic.

And when their lips part again Danny laughs, a shudder and wet heat bursting past his fingers despite himself. His whole body trembles but he doesn’t stop moving, lost in the dance they share together, coiling in savage twists and primal passion. He won’t stop until the music does, until their breaths quiet and their bodies tire. Alive and free and fiery, he smears his sticky hand up across James’ chest, fingers hooking over his shoulders as if to keep himself from unmooring from gravity entirely.

“Don’t let me go,” Danny whispers, a cry spiking his voice as he takes James harder, deeper.

James doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t have to. Not when his hands curl against Danny and his arms slip over his back, not when he tugs his hair and feels him make those sweet kitten sounds of pleasure. He holds to Danny as he comes, hot and thick inside him, kissing worship against sweaty collarbones, thumbing over sensitive peaked nipples.

James lays back and takes Danny with him, laughing when they both collapse in groaning pleasure against each other, a tangle of limbs in bed.

“I don’t plan on it,” he murmurs, nosing against Danny’s cheek before he kisses him again, chaste and light. Each one makes Danny smile more. Each elicits a shiver or a squirm or a soft little sound. He splays his hand across James’ cheek to keep him there, even as a kiss just beside his ear makes his nose wrinkle, ticklish.

The seemingly boundless energy that pulled Danny to walk across London, to dance for hours, to everything that came after finally ebbs from him. Spent, exhausted, his body settles into only aftershocks of the movement that sent him surging for so long. Little shivers as their sweat dries between them. Little hums as Danny noses up to James’ hairline and breathes him in.

“I don’t think I’ll need the excuse,” he murmurs, turning his cheek to rest against James’ hair as the older man nuzzles against his throat. A soft snort gives way to a grin as he adds, “I can’t drink scotch as often as I’d need it.”

“You’d be trashed off your face before we even got out of bed,” James replies, and they laugh, both, pressed together. Skinny limbs and strong ones, hairless chest and the mess between them both. James kisses Danny again, lingering and warm, and noses against his long hair, arms heavy over Danny’s form and eyes closed.

“Excuses are only exceptions to a rule,” he says. “But if we rewrite our rules, and take away a need for exceptions…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, words mumbled in sleep and breathing eased against Danny’s skin.

And he doesn’t have to.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re not really going to make me work today, are you,” Danny asks._
> 
> _James considers this, lifting one of Danny’s legs out of the water to wash from knee to ankle, strong fingers spreading the lather between his toes until Danny squirms, ticklish._
> 
> _“Shall we not?” James asks him, smiling when Danny nods. James takes up his other leg to wash. “What shall we do instead?”_
> 
> _“Anything,” Danny laughs, toes curling when James’ fingers slot between them. “Anything else.”_

The night before seems like a blessed dream when James awakens and Danny isn’t there. Perhaps it was that, desperate imaginings born of exhaustion after the club. Danny’s warm body beside his own as they sleep almost nightly, before he scampers away in the morning.

James rolls to his back and listens to the shower run, and finds his answer crusted dry across his stomach. He drapes his arm across his eyes and laughs, helpless with relief, but the sound cuts short as footsteps click bare across the floor.

Danny lingers in the doorway, cigarettes and lighter in hand, and only his boxers clinging to narrow hips beneath James’ too-large hoodie. His hair is wild, eyes dark-ringed but not rimmed with red, nor strained by a furrow across his forehead. He looks to James for all the world like Puck, impish and lovely, lacking only his horns.

Danny arches a brow, bemused. “Alright?”

“Alright,” James agrees, watching him from under his arm. “I thought you were in the shower.”

“Filling up the bath, actually. Do you always lie here laughing when I’m washing up in the morning?”

“If I imagine that you will look like a half-drowned kitten when you come out, yes, I often do,” James replies, spreading his fingers and tilting his head enough to see Danny properly. He knows him well, of course, but there is something lovely in being allowed to study one’s lover in the morning after a night spent enjoying each other.

He will leave little bites and bruises against Danny’s thighs next time, he thinks, letting his eyes linger on the skin he wants to mark as his own before he lifts them.

“Good morning,” he murmurs.

Danny’s smile twitches wider, finally broad enough that he ducks his head and fumbles with his hair, as if to hide behind it.

“Good morning,” he answers, cheeks warm. He pads into the room to leave his cigarettes decisively on the side of the bed where he sleeps. His side, symbolically claimed by the only thing he seems to enjoy against his lips as much as coffee and James himself.

A moment’s hesitation leads to another decision, and resting a knee against the bed, Danny leans across its width and touches a kiss to the corner of James’ mouth. Though he leans up for another, Danny deflects. His nose wrinkles as he smiles and shakes his head, slinking back to stand with a barely-there wince.

“I’ve just smoked and haven’t brushed my teeth yet,” he says by way of warning. “I also smell like sweat and -”

“And?”

Danny gives him a wry look, eyes lifted away as he tries to fight off another smile. He unzips James’ hoodie, the movement echoing that of the blush that now spreads nearly to his chest. The hoodie is tossed over James’ head. His pants follow.

“Coming?” Danny asks.

James makes a long, low sound of delight and stretches his arms over his head. He’s half hard beneath the covers, as much from the morning as from seeing Danny this way. He notes the next little wince and shift of Danny’s hips with a lip between his teeth, before he crawls from bed and follows him to the bathroom.

He doesn’t hesitate in catching Danny around the waist and pulling him back against his chest, kissing his neck in greeting. He wants nothing more than to spend all day nosing against him and filling every sense with Danny. His smell and taste, the sight of him, the silkiness of his skin, the sighs he makes…

“For you? Always.”

“I knew it,” Danny sighs, even as he squeezes James’ arms tighter around him. “I knew it was - no. I’m not saying it again.”

“I don’t mind if you don’t say it again, so long as it happens again,” James murmurs. “And again. And again.”

Danny snorts when he laughs, fingers moving to muffle the sound a moment too late. He shivers and settles when James mouths along the curve of his neck. Danny watches their reflection as James’ hair shines in golden blond and silver grey beneath his fingers. For two people with a lifetime between them, for all the differences in appearance and personality, they are one in the same.

And bloody cute to boot, Danny thinks with a grin.

“You’re going to have to let me go,” he says to James, stretching to reach his toothbrush.

“I made a promise. I don’t break my promises.”

“D’you promise to clean up the floor, then, when the water overflows?”

“We’re like an old married couple already,” James murmurs, seemingly delighted by this. He lets Danny go, watching him turn off the water and dip his toothbrush into it before he returns to get the toothpaste. With a deliberate look and a hum, Danny sets the brush against his teeth and steps backwards towards the tub, beckoning James to come with.

It is sickeningly domestic, and James wouldn’t have it any other way. He has ached for some consistency in his life, has craved it and hurt for it, has tried and failed to grasp it and yet here, with this incredible man, he seems to have touched perhaps a semblance of it.

“I think we slept much of the day away,” James comments, watching Danny step into the tub and sink into the water with a groan. He changes the direction he brushes and regards James with a foamy grin. “I could tell them it was because you’re rabid and I’ve caught it. Perhaps they’ll find their overly sensitive minds far too frightened and leave us be, do you think?”

“Rabid,” Danny exclaims, the word slurred around his toothbrush. “Why rabid?”

“I’m not sure how else to explain all the little bites you left on me last night.”

This earns a hum of agreement, amidst the soft tapping of water against the edge of the tub and the rustle of his brush. Danny sinks deeper into the water, head against the wall, and watches with interest as James stretches out the kinks from his neck. How far they’ve come from only making motions towards this, when both were buried far too deep to truly grasp it. Now when James’ scars make sense and Danny doesn’t hate himself for feeling his heart beat faster, it seems so simple.

They just had to go through hell to find something like paradise.

“Show off,” Danny finally decides, but he doesn’t stop looking when James stretches his arms behind his head instead. “God, you’re fit,” he mutters, before nodding towards the sink. “Cup.”

“What was that?”

“Cup,” Danny says again, bringing up a hand to stop from foaming toothpaste all into the bath as he struggles not to laugh. “Cup, not cock, cup - fuck.”

“I suppose I can oblige you in that,” James replies, and Danny closes his eyes trying to keep more laughter at bay. James does get him a cup, though, first to spit, then again - filled with cool water, for him to rinse his mouth and toothbrush in. He obligingly takes both away, as well, to set to the sink again. When he returns, he sets one foot into the water, then the other, and slips into the bath, careful to keep the water from sloshing as he stretches forward to lie against Danny’s chest.

“You are lovely.” 

“Shut up.”

“Handsome.”

“Stop.”

“Unbelievably distracting.”

Danny finally yields with a laugh, and quiets James with a kiss. Far from the feverish heat of the night before, they settle to a comfortable simmer. Lips touch but hardly press. They tilt their heads a little just to learn again the movements of the other’s mouth.

“You are fit, though,” Danny tells him again, tracing the swell of muscle that joins neck to shoulder, back and forth. “You looked incredible last night.”

“Nothing compared to you,” says James. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Bollocks. Salt a slug and it’s rather the same sort of spasming,” he grins.

“You’re extraordinary. Free and wild and uncaring of what anyone else thought of you, because you damn well know you’re beautiful. And me,” he adds with a snort and a slight smile. “An old man trying desperately to keep up with you.”

“Who everyone was watching from the moment you strode in,” Danny tells him, delighted. “Everyone who wasn’t having it off on someone else’s arse, anyway. Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.”

“Other people’s business, even in the middle of the dance floor, was hardly my concern.”

“The people watching you,” clarifies Danny, grinning. “Prat.”

He spreads his legs against the tub to let James settle more easily between. Skinny thighs press to his sides, and Danny’s arms drape across his shoulders as James rests his cheek against Danny’s chest and listens to his heart. Running his fingers through James’ hair, Danny smiles.

“You were snatched up quickly,” James notes after a moment, and Danny grins, hearing right through his tone. He reaches for the soap and dips it into the steaming water, lathering it in slow strokes along James’ back.

“Mr. Bond,” he declares. “Are you jealous?”

James’ cock twitching against Danny's thigh is answer enough and he hums low against his boy as Danny washes him. He had wanted immediately to claim Danny back when he had been touched, when Danny had arched back against another.

“Hardly,” he sighs, smiling. Both know it's a blatant lie. “Perhaps a little.”

Danny snorts and continues massaging the slick soap into James’ skin. The agent stretches and arches beneath the touch like a huge sleepy cat, letting one hand slip beneath the water to stroke against Danny's stomach.

“You were truly mesmerizing,” he murmurs. “I’m afraid we may have to go again.”

Danny squirms, as much from being tickled by James’ feathery touch as in delight from his words. He follows broad muscles and slick skin with his soapy hands, scars that rise and fall, puckered and smooth. He dips his hands down to the dimples at the base of Bond’s back, delighted when James groans as Danny works his fingers into the tired muscles there.

“Tonight?” Danny asks.

“You’re joking.”

“Definitely not,” blinks Danny, entirely too pleased with himself. “It’s Saturday.”

“And we danced for hours last night.”

“That’s how it works,” he says. “Friday night you go out, sleep off most of Saturday. Wake up and wash and eat something. Get dressed again to go out. Sleep off all of Sunday.”

“Now I do feel bloody old.”

Danny rubs deeper against James’ back, kneading catlike and steady. He ducks his head and nuzzles his hair, breathing him in. His entire body reacts at once, a surge of desire and familiarity and bone-deep pleasure that ripples goosebumps across his skin.

“Or,” Danny murmurs, smiling, “we could go out to dinner. That’s allowed now, like dancing. New rule. And you can teach me how to tango.”

James laughs, a low and pleased sound, and turns a little more into Danny’s seeking touches. He imagines, for a moment, handling Danny in a tango as he has handled other partners, male and female. He imagines the blush of the younger man, the smile and laughter, how his nose would wrinkle in pleasure.

“Dinner,” he agrees, damn near purring like an enormous cat as Danny continues his massage. “And a beginner lesson in tango.”

Danny grins and draws his knees up a little more around James where he lies. Both are half-hard, but neither care to do anything about it. It doesn’t matter. They are so comfortable in their tub, enjoying the hot water, the closeness, the simplicity of making plans together. They have time for that. They seem to have nothing but time.

James brings his hand up to stroke against Danny’s neck, feeling his slow pulse, the hard tendons when he stretches and arches. James slips his fingers in Danny’s hair and pulls himself nearer to kiss him. Easing lower in the water, until his chin is just above, Danny sprawls beneath James, arms draped around his shoulders.

James holds himself up with one arm, his other hand tugging Danny’s curls straight. Seeking up across his shoulders, Danny follows with his fingertips the agent’s taut muscles, along the backs of his arms, palms pressing to his biceps. Levering himself up firmer to meet James’ mouth, Danny moans. His lips are caught again and their kiss twists slowly together.

How many days has Danny wanted nothing in the world more than this?

How many of those days did Danny hate himself for wanting it from James?

Too many, but now those thoughts are so unfamiliar that they seem to belong to someone else entirely. James’ work required him to perform redactions. Danny’s work required him to do the same. Neither can be faulted more than the other. Neither want to fault the other any more than themselves.

Danny arches upward, smooth chest sliding slick against James’. Their bellies brush, James’ a ripple of defined abdominals and Danny’s soft and flat. The rises of their hipbones bump, and both their stirring cocks twitch towards the other. Danny holds to James beneath his arms, hands over his shoulders, laughing against his lips when James settles his squirming by pressing down against him.

He feels like a little bird caught between the paws of a cat whose claws are sheathed. Each way Danny twists and coils and squirms, James moves in opposite. A leg brought against his hip is spread to the side of the tub when James leans against it. A push to sit higher in the water finds Danny kissed back down again. He nips James’ bottom lip and suckles it between his own, hair tugged until he relents with another breathless noise of pleasure.

“D’you have any idea,” Danny murmurs, sighing laughter. “Any bloody idea how many times I spite-wanked over you in the mornings?”

James blinks, their roiling slowing to a pause. Danny grins as James asks, with mild alarm, “Beg pardon?”

“Spite-wanked,” Danny says again, biting his lip and releasing it with a triumphant delight, stroking James’ shoulders. “I know this is hard to believe, but there was a period of time in which I was not particularly pleased with our situation.”

“I’m aware,” he says. “But you…”

“Still woke up hard, aching for you to roll over and mount me until I couldn’t sit right for the rest of the day? Yes,” Danny grins. “Why d’you think I’m always first out of bed and into the shower?”

“I thought you were a morning person,” James replies dryly and Danny laughs again, yelping a little when he is pressed further into the tub and water splashes over the side.

“James!”

“Yes, darling?”

“You’re making a mess.”

“I’ve hardly started making a mess out of you.”

“Of the bathroom. You're making a mess of the - shit -”

James pins Danny as comfortably as he can against the tub and takes both their cocks in hand to stroke. His other arm slips behind his head to cradle it and he raises an eyebrow as he regards the lovely flushed thing beneath him.

“What else did you think about? On those hateful mornings,” he purrs.

Danny hums against his bottom lip, bitten between his teeth. His eyes close as his hips curl, thrusting slowly into James’ hand. Fingers laced at the back of James’ neck, he nuzzles against his cheek and sighs.

“I hoped you would join me,” he says, “even though I’d have told you to piss off. I’d set my arm against the wall and wank, imagining your mouth around me. On your knees in front of me, your lips red and puffy from sucking me off. Behind me, holding me open and using your tongue.”

“More,” James says. The command tugs Danny’s shoulders straight, cock jerking to further fullness, sensitive skin stroked slick against sensitive skin, their lengths shoving roughly together.

“Sometimes - when I was really livid, you know? I’d use my fingers.”

“On yourself,” James breathes.

“Yes.”

“Inside.”

“Yes,” shivers Danny.

“How many?”

“Two, at least. Three, but it was never enough. I hoped you’d hear me,” he sighs, grasping James’ hair and breathing against his cheek. “Find me like that, cursing you beneath my breath. Cursing myself. And you’d tell me to hush and slap my hand away and use your cock instead.”

James hums delight at the honesty and strokes harder, bringing them both to shaking in the cooling water. 

“Terrible boy,” James chastens him. “Selfish thing. I would ache waiting for you to get out of that shower so I could use the water to stifle the sounds I made imagining you in there with me.”

Danny laughs, breath hitching as he lets his lips part and his head drop back.

“Both of us, Jesus,” he murmurs.

“We both have a stubborn streak, don't we, darling?”

“Impossible,” he agrees, gasping.

“Unreasonable.”

“Rebellious.”

“Hopeless,” James purrs but Danny sets a shaky hand to James’ jaw and lifts his eyes. Shaking his head, Danny’s lips part in a protest that only forms in the pitched and rising gasps of impending orgasm.

They aren’t hopeless. Not now, not as they were before. In each other, they’ve found what they never imagined they might. Never daring to dream that someone might hear them, listen, understand and accept. Both afraid for too long to risk seeking more.

Danny’s body snares tighter with every tug between them. Legs lifting stroke by stroke, chest heaving, he contorts into his climax with a groan, fingernails curling against James’ scalp as James tightens his arm around him. The sound hitches into a laugh as his cock swells and spills into the water. He’s still shaking when James buries a moan against his throat and lets himself go in turn.

James takes his time nuzzling against Danny before finally pulling away and smiling sleepily at him.

“We may need to shower, now, to get properly clean.”

Danny laughs and settles deliberately further in the water, lazy and tired. James strokes his hair from his face and kisses his forehead.

“Alright,” he acquiesces to the unspoken request. “Breakfast in bed. Fresh coffee. Potentially a nap before work.” The fussy noise Danny makes is met with an arched brow, as James settles to his knees to take up the soap himself this time instead. He rubs it between his hands and sighs.

“Spoiled,” James decides, as he rubs lather to Danny’s chest, smooth and hairless. Bubbles obscure the sleek lines of the young man’s skinny body beneath the water, but that doesn’t stop him from looking, watching, appreciating every curve and shadow. It’s hard not to envy the youthful energy in him. Even now, after a long night, good sex, an orgasm moments before in a warm bath, Danny writhes in little pleasurable motions beneath James’ hand.

When he washes lower, through the thick dark hair between his legs, Danny bites his lip and bends into this touch, too.

“You’re not really going to make me work today, are you,” Danny asks.

James considers this, lifting one of Danny’s legs out of the water to wash from knee to ankle, strong fingers spreading the lather between his toes until Danny squirms, ticklish.

“Shall we not?” James asks him, smiling when Danny nods. James takes up his other leg to wash. “What shall we do instead?”

“Anything,” Danny laughs, toes curling when James’ fingers slot between them. “Anything else.”

“Is it so bad?” James asks, not doubtful, but genuinely curious. They almost never discuss work, and even then only in the aftermath of another interrogation. Even then only in Danny’s snarling unhappiness as he smokes through a pack of cigarettes before collapsing to sleep.

Danny shrugs a little, dipping his foot back beneath the water when it’s released. “Same things I did before, really. Less substances involved. Less porn.” He watches as James washes his chest, his stomach. Lip between his teeth, Danny’s eyes hood in appreciation for the scene before him. “But it doesn’t feel at all the same.”

“What’s changed?”

“Asking for yourself, or for them?” Danny says, though there’s no rancor in his tone.

“For myself,” James assures him, and Danny nods. It takes him a moment, brow creased, before he shakes his head.

“Before all this happened, I was doing something that mattered. It was exciting, dangerous. Important. Amidst causing chaos, we were retrieving information from being encrypted and buried in data centers. Information that people have a right to know. Need to know. Everything we found and released was a victory.”

“For whom?”

“For humanity. For freedom,” Danny shrugs. “The government - all of it, all of them, they’re all the same - they lie to us. They spy on us, on everything we do. They police our movements and our thoughts with surveillance, documentation, policies and conversations passed in secret as to how better to keep us docile. All of that is a threat, though they make up reasons it’s not. It’s like having a loaded gun pointed to your head at all times and being told, ‘Well, our finger’s not on the trigger.’”

James strokes against Danny's neck and draws his knuckles down his cheek. He says nothing until he pushes to get out of the bath, reaches for a fluffy towel for Danny when he follows him out of the tub.

“Would it truly be best if all information was free to the general public?”

“Why not?”

“Certain people find pleasure in sowing discord with misinformation. A quote out of context. Fear mongering with a single base idea. Few people would look into the full facts when such bite-sized morsels of excitement are available from those who shout them loudest.”

Danny takes the towel and sets it to his hair, scrubbing through briskly. “You think people would panic.”

“Perhaps.”

“Isn’t that a better use of a government, at its core? To explain and present information completely?”

“You’re assuming people would listen,” James says. “That’s rather a utopic view of things. And you’re assuming there’s time to do all that rather than attend the issues at hand.”

“Such as?”

Danny finds the towel taken from him, wrapped around his middle with James’ arms atop. He leans against him, smoothing James’ hair back from his face.

“Say we receive intel that there’s an attack planned on the underground. It’s a legitimate threat, we know who’s going to try it, when and how. What you’re suggesting is we share that information immediately, and then we’ve got to expend resources settling everyone down and evacuating.”

“Rather than -”

“Rather than going in,” James says, then amends. “Rather than my going in, neutralizing the threat, and everyone still gets use the tube to get to work on time.”

“That’s an extraordinary example.”

“You’re extraordinary,” James murmurs against his brow, smiling when Danny snorts and twists away to make his way towards the bedroom.

“Piss off,” he says, fondly. “I still don’t see how that justifies spying on one’s own civilians. The scant chance of an attack like that -”

“You only think they’re scant because you don’t hear about all of them.”

“What’s it got to do with monitoring people’s phones? Messages? Their private emails?” Danny asks, slipping into a clean pair of pants from the drawer he keeps his things in. “People deserve to know that their essential human freedoms are being whittled away, their lives and private matters analyzed and stored. People deserve to know when the government strikes bargains with defense contractors and pads their pockets with profit from illegal wars. Corruption should be exposed. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

James says nothing for a moment, tossing the towel to the hamper and reaching for a pair of briefs for himself. 

“Do you know what happened when the Cambridge team first solved an Enigma transmission?” He asks after a moment, watching Danny crawl into bed and lay back, watching him.

“Information was passed to the allies. Faster Bombe machines were made to help others with decoding the U-boat transmissions.”

James nods, padding closer to bed and setting his knees to it, crawling closer to Danny and holding himself up over him.

“The breakthrough would have allowed many ships on the sea that day to be saved. Redirected away from harm. None were.” He watches Danny blink. “Had they been, the Germans would have known their code was broken and they would have made all the work to break the first code void by immediately changing it. There is safety in withholding information sometimes.”

“For the greater good?”

“To use a clichéd and terrible term, yes.”

Danny soothes himself by stroking down James’ cheek, along his neck. Across his collarbone and down over his arm, a touch so light that James shivers as Danny allows the argument and considers it.

“And you’re willing to allow for collateral damage from doing so.”

“Always,” James says. “There is always collateral damage.”

“I don’t imagine the families of those sailors would appreciate that.”

“Nor those who in your data dumps have had their information spread far and wide for anyone to find. Government employees they may be, but their families aren’t.”

Danny lifts a brow and sighs. He doesn’t argue that. It’s the collateral damage of his own work and that of the Society, a point of unpleasant cognitive dissonance soothed by comfortable groupthink and flippant jokes that Danny readily allows to minimize the harm he knows they do.

For the greater good, indeed.

“What of me?” James asks, then, and Danny grins a little. Arms around James’ neck, he pulls him close and wriggles small and secure beneath him, shivering when James kisses his neck.

“What about you?”

“Your organization catches wind that we’re trying to destabilize a region,” he suggests. “More good will come of removing the leadership there quietly than to go through all the saber rattling required for an official action. Lives will be saved and even improved, far more than the ones sacrificed. As a nation, we are ostensibly allied with this regime, who we know internally to be corrupt. Does the Society release this information?”

“Of course. Everything. Always.”

“Why?”

“Our government’s got no right to play God with other countries. Judge, jury, and executioner - it’s not our job nor our prerogative.”

“When the Society releases these details, I’m the operative named on the assignment,” James says. “I’m already in that region, trying to maintain cover that’s just been blown. What happens then?”

Danny’s breath shortens, though not from the pleasure of James’ relentless nuzzling murmurs pressed just beneath his ear. He knows what happens then, and he closes his eyes to try not to see it. He needn’t say aloud his thoughts; James can feel them, and eases Danny’s tension away with slow strokes against his side.

“If you didn’t know me, as you do now, would you care?” James presses, only gently, and with a rueful smile, Danny shakes his head.

A cruel admission, an ugly one, but honest. He’s dropped countless measures of information, scattered it to the wind from all manner of corporations and governments, from people who the Society simply doesn’t like, to journalists and police officers and anyone else at odds with their views. He would have shared that information, before all this. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

“I still hate working for them,” Danny whispers.

“I know.”

“I still think what they do is wrong.”

“It probably is,” James says, “in many ways.”

“I love you.” The words come clearly, honest and open and surprising. Danny licks them from his lips and immediately wriggles to his side, grasping for his phone. “Can we go to the park today?”

James blinks at him, just as surprised and delighted to hear them. He says nothing, nor does he make Danny repeat them. Instead, he leans near and kisses behind Danny’s ear, nuzzling into the warm curls that will dry in a frenzy if they’re not brushed down.

“Which?”

“Any,” Danny tells him, flipping through his phone quickly, seemingly with no purpose but to keep his hands busy and his face tucked away from James who simply kisses him on the cheek and pulls away to get a pair of trousers.

“We could see the pelicans,” he suggests.

Danny glances back at him, cheeks speckled scarlet in a ruddy blush, warming more when he grins. “Pelicans? Where?”

“At St. James’ Park.”

“Appropriate,” Danny snorts, still smiling as he lets his phone rest and turns to watch James dress. He’s always enjoyed it, just as much as watching him undress. Practiced movements, smooth and elegant. A beautifully body framed in beautiful clothes. “I’d like that. Could use the sun.”

“Could use the fresh air. Forty minutes of it, if we walk there.”

“Forty-five if we circle past 10 Downing so I can bottle it.”

James raises a brow at this, gaze drifting downward as Danny drags himself up to sit. The tension has passed, eased away by words that needed to be spoken. Both know all too well how it feels to wait too long to say them.

“Legitimate threats against the Prime Minister, or his windows, must be nullified without hesitation,” James says, straightening his cuffs and closing them. Danny shivers at the snap of his tone, spreading his hands against the mattress behind him, legs loosely crossed. His eyes narrow, delighted.

“It's civil disobedience.”

“It's vandalism. Antisocial behavior. Outright treachery, to be frank. Those windows are enormously expensive.”

Danny hums, biting his lip, and the deep breath he takes arches his chest a little forward, bending his back. “I promise I’ll be good,” he says, “sir.”

James hums, raising an eyebrow as he takes two steps to stand by the bed once more, close enough for Danny to reach with his toes and press against his knee. He watches the young man, coy and lovely and rested, and drops his hand to draw fingers tickling against the curve of Danny’s foot.

With a shriek, Danny retracts it, but is not quick enough to pull himself away. James falls upon him, hands against his sides and under his arms, tickling until the other cries mercy, his voice too high and eyes tearing, still laughing against the pillow when he’s released. James kisses his cheek and noses against him, and pulls back to select a tie from the closet.

Danny grins as he seeks through them, selecting a gunmetal grey to pair with the lighter grey suit. He’s delighted that James takes the time to do so, delighted more that he’s doing it to share what can only be called a date with Danny. Laughing again, drawing a curious look from the agent, Danny squirms in pleasure that James is wearing a suit on their date to a park.

He’s ridiculous. Lovely. Far too bloody charming and wholly aware of it. Compassionate and patient, with a rebellious streak as broad as Danny’s own. Not a prison guard and not a handler, but someone who has chosen to protect Danny from others and himself.

A remarkable man who has chosen to care for Danny, out of everyone in the world.

“I do, you know. Intensely. Dizzyingly, at times. More than I should, maybe, but,” Danny pauses and shakes his head, smiling against James’ pillow. “I think I’ve wanted to let myself feel it for a while now. I’ve not let myself think about it but it’s been there anyway, the feeling. The want. Longer than I should admit because it’d make me sound like a schoolboy, but - I do. I really, really do.”

James tries, failing, to fight down his smile as he knots his tie and watches Danny in the mirror. “You do what, darling? Just say it.”

Danny blinks, and grins. “Want to see the pelicans, of course. What could you imagine I meant?”

“Bottling the Prime Minister.”

With a snort, Danny laughs, easing into a stretch. Toes and fingers splay, his lean little body pulled so tight he trembles with it before relaxing, and dragging himself from bed to find clothes. “That too,” he agrees.

James smiles as he passes him, a small hand against the base of James’ back before he lets go. Danny doesn’t dress up as much, he dresses comfortably in some slim trousers and a button-down. He knows he needn’t dress up to impress James, just as he knows that James is not dressing up to impress him. He merely _is_. Suited and elegant and posh and lovely.

And loved.

James finishes his tie just as Danny pulls on his belt, and buttoning up his vest he moves to stand before the younger man. He sets his fingers beneath his chin to lift it. Danny blinks. James smiles at him and leans in to kiss just the corner of his mouth, intimate and gentle, entirely soft.

“Let us both be schoolboys with our unspoken admissions, then,” he sighs.

Danny’s smile widens, even as he lowers his eyes. A tilt of his head brings another kiss touched lightly to his cheek, and he nods, relieved - even without Bond speaking the words themselves. Both breathe a little easier with the certainty that whatever comes, the other knows. No more secrets.

Not again.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Strong arms hold him as if they’ll never let him go, and Danny laughs. Strong arms bend against his chest, moved by hands that don’t look like Danny’s own. Strong arms must hold him still, in place, unmoving. He can hardly breathe for the pressure on his chest._
> 
> _He doesn’t deserve to breathe._
> 
> _He asks Alex to instead._

James holds Danny’s hand the entire walk to St. James’ park. He seems to care as little as Danny does, when it comes to whether or not they’re seen. And they are seen, undoubtedly - on every camera, on every corner, and by every potential undercover operative set to observe as backup. 

To those outside of MI6’s surveillance sector, they appear as any couple might. Danny laughs and James walks backwards to watch him. Gesticulations met with a grin, frowns met with a tilted head and a murmured jest. Slowly, with every step, they allow themselves to build up a life both want beyond the weight of their work.

The park is hardly full but enough people meander through it to give James the excuse to tug Danny closer. Shuffling his own steps to walk in time with the younger man at his side so Danny laughs, shuffling to walk out of time and tug him along stumbling, only to catch him against his chest with a grin.

“Menace,” Danny scolds him, fingers curled in his jacket’s lapels. His smile spreads as he searches between James’ eyes, studies his mouth, and rises to his toes to steal a chaste kiss. No one notices. No one minds.

And when James pulls him onward, Danny happily goes. They settle to the benches alongside tourists and families, applauding politely when the groundskeeper appears and the pelicans come towards him. Enormous things, saurian in the extreme, Danny marvels at the size of them and how swiftly they swallow the herrings they’re fed. James watches Danny far more than the birds, studying every widening of his eyes, every little laugh and crooked grin. A kiss pressed to his cheek blossoms to a blush and James watches that too, smiling a little more when Danny elbows him in the side for it.

The day is warm and unexpectedly cloudless. After sharing an ice cream, Danny insists on sprawling out on the plush grass. His skin pinks quickly, James notices. His shirt rides up a little and James slyly notices that as well. Danny notices him noticing and tries not to grin, but he can’t help it, and only James’ palm against his stomach stops Danny from shoving his shirt back down again.

They share a kiss, sun-warmed and soft and strawberry-sweet.

Then they share a few more.

They spend hours at the park before Danny sits up and lazily stretches. James watches him, demands a hand to pull him up and uses it to pull Danny down once more. Neither seem at all concerned that it takes them a good while to untangle again.

They pick up fish and chips on the way home, carrying a warm bundle each beneath the arms that don’t link them together. Danny leans on James and he takes his weight with ease, turning his nose against sun-warmed curls. At home, they spread their feast on the counter and talk of nothing at all as they eat it. Chip by chip, with flakes of fish and smears of sauce, they work themselves to comfortable fullness and meander to the bedroom, the crumpled newspaper left behind.

It’s hardly late - certainly not by Danny’s standards - but neither seem to care that they settle in to doze together. James lays his head against Danny’s chest, the other’s long fingers carding through blonde strands until he, too, settles to nap and spreads his palm against the back of his neck instead. As his thoughts quiet into sleep, Danny recalls that they were meant to tango today.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Danny laughs as he’s turned, all too aware that he’s following the lead in their dance. James’ work-rough hand presses against his own, palm to palm, the other against the small of his back. Their lips pass over the other, but don’t yet touch.

“I’m too clumsy,” he whispers, helpless but delighted. He can’t move like others move, controlled and practiced. He can hardly make out their bodies around him but he knows they’re there, forbidding in their black-clad elegance.

“Just hold to me,” James says. “Stay with me.”

The room whirls around Danny again, little lights blurred like falling stars, his heartbeat spiraling faster. He sinks his arm around James’ neck, their brows pressed together. Danny tries to match his steps, without flourish or finesse, and stumbles as he’s pulled forward.

“On your feet.”

The arm around Danny’s waist snares him tight, too tight, so tight that he shifts to try and free himself. He can hardly lift his arms, blinking against flickering candlelight, squinting against scarlet heat. There’s a heater where a fireplace should be, surrounded by thin black plastic.

It’s too bright. Too loud between his ears. The music’s become a droning buzz and he can’t find the rhythm of it to steady his heart. Sweat soaks his hair against his skin but he can’t make his hands move in time to wipe it away. Around him, the motion of bodies and their chattering words blur too quickly for Danny to follow.

He tilts his gaze to the fireplace again, the heater, the screen.

_I’m afraid._

“Alex?” Danny whispers, fingers twitching as sweat burns his eyes to blurring.

Alex makes a sound, a sobbing sound, and Danny shakes his head until Alex is laughing instead. It’s such a rare thing when it happens that Danny can recall every time Alex has done it. The beach spans white before them, the fire warm, crackling, sending sparks to the night sky, bronze joining together in silver ribbons and strands of pale gold.

 _I love you_.

Danny blinks. Because he remembers every laugh and every turn of Alex’s lovely head, he remembers the conversations they had, the secrets exchanged by streetlamp-light peering in through the soft curtains. He remembers that Alex told him he loved him in bed. They were together in bed. They were together in -

_Danny._

The heater’s making the air waver and twitch and Danny can’t figure out why it’s so hard to breathe.

_Danny, I’m afraid._

“I’m here,” Danny tells him, tongue as thick and unmoving as the rest of his body, all but his eyes that spill dampness down his cheeks before filling again. “I’m here, I -”

_Please, Danny._

Alex’s breath speeds, gasping shorter and shorter. Fingernails curl against leather, scraping lines down Danny’s back. He hushes him softly, lips parted against his cheek, as the bed rocks against the wall and the trunk shudders on the floor and Danny moans his love and grief with a helpless wail.

Strong arms hold him as if they’ll never let him go, and Danny laughs. Strong arms bend against his chest, moved by hands that don’t look like Danny’s own. Strong arms must hold him still, in place, unmoving. He can hardly breathe for the pressure on his chest.

He doesn’t deserve to breathe.

He asks Alex to instead, as in his ears the hiss of air and electricity threatens to deafen him. Shaking so hard the chair beneath him rattles, muscles that won’t move still snapped so tight they’re all but tearing away from his splinting bones. Words echo in reminder of what he has to do. What only he can do.

How he can save the world with their sacrifice.

“Breathe,” Danny whispers, as the trunk clicks closed again. “Please breathe.”

_Alex!_

It comes through like static on the radio, just out of tune enough to feel awkward, to draw brows together, to turn heads. Danny can’t breathe and neither can Alex and his own voice doesn’t exist anymore, one speaks in his place, in his ear, fills him to the brim and makes him choke, overflowing with something that isn’t his doing, isn’t his choice, isn’t his -

_\- doing. Your doing, your fault, your work, your life, your choice, your failure, your dedication to a corrupt society -_

Society.

“Alex?”

_I’m afraid._

“Alex!”

_Breathe. Please breathe._

He did this. When he jerked his arm away and laughed as Alex tickled him, when he pressed fingers and tongue and cock inside, when he lay heavy between his legs and kissed the sweat from his brow. He did this.

_Ask him if he wants to play a game._

He did this. When the trunk latched shut and he listened to Alex lose the well-honed steadiness of his breath gasp by panicked gasp.

_You have to do this._

The heater is so close, flickering unsteady, blinding bright and distorted. Danny looks away from it but his head lifts again as if by someone else’s hand. He has to watch, to see, to know. He can’t turn away from what he’s done.

_Do it, Danny._

“I’m sorry.”

The lights around him spin and flicker. Candlelight and computers and campfire. Danny struggles with the latch, glinting silver. He blinks and Alex’s eyes crinkle a little in the corners. He reaches for him, just to touch his cheek again, once more, only once more and the trunk gasps open.

_Danny._

“Alex,” Danny sobs. “I’m sorry.”

“Danny.” James’ voice is low, quiet, his hands rough against Danny’s face. He turns away from them with a jerk. Pressing his lips to the cool of the pillow beside him, Danny’s eyes fly open and he blinks until he can get the room into focus again. A familiar room, a safe room, James’ room, _their_ room.

“Danny, you have to breathe for me, darling.”

“Don’t say that -”

“You had a nightmare.”

No, no it was more than that, it was more than that. Danny can feel the hands clasping him, still, he remembers bruises on his arms after. It hurt. It was designed to hurt, all of it. It’s a mess, it’s such a bloody mess, all of this.

The dream fades as quickly as it had fallen upon him and all Danny can do is shake as James’ hand runs up and down his back, soothing him until he can time the shaking breaths from his lips to the rhythm. Up and down. In and out. Over and over and over.

“One more,” Danny whispers, emptying his lungs against the pillow. “Just one more. Morning, kiss, touch, a look,” he says. A quick shake of his head does little to clear the fuzz from his head. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I -”

_Alex, I’m sorry._

He can hardly move, jerked from deep sleep to waking so suddenly his body’s not caught up. His muscles tremble despite, quivering beneath James’ hand in the aftermath of adrenaline. He shook so hard the chair rattled.

He sat on the floor.

He wasn’t in a chair.

_You sat beside him on the floor._

“I laid my head against the trunk,” he whispers.

James listens, saying nothing, and lets Danny speak. How many mornings he woke up in a cold sweat, seeking for a notebook to write down his thoughts, his dreams and visions over and over to make sense of his situation. How long he had kept those notebooks, bound and carefully collated. How long before he could leave them buried at the bottom of a box and not obsessively check them again.

“I sat beside him on the floor and - and I listened. I -”

_You’re playing a game._

“The endorphins are incredible,” Danny whispers, but his brows furrow, the words taste like dust. James strokes his hair, gently tugs it and shifts closer. Pressing himself up against Danny’s back, he lets a hand seek down against his stomach, relieved when Danny folds his fingers between James’ own.

The trunk shifted when Alex moved. He remembers that.

He heard it shudder. Saw it jerk against the floor.

There were grooves where it was dragged.

“No,” he says, squirming to his back and pressing his palms to his eyes until lights glow against his lids. Blinking, over and over, flashing red. It must have been when they moved the trunk, the hiking guides filling it in order and making it heavy enough to leave marks. Where had they put them?

“Breathe,” James whispers, and Danny sighs hard against his palms to feel the air leave his lungs, to hear it hiss sharp and loud. He stops trying to find answers in the muddle of fading dream and faltering memory. He doesn’t remember how he set the box up. He told them that during his interrogations.

It hardly matters now.

“Fucking terrible,” Danny whispers after minutes pass, and he lets his hands slip from his eyes and lay against the bed. James’ hand is on his stomach, a counterweight by which Danny can feel his breath making it rise and fall. “Does it ever stop?”

“It happens less often.”

Danny tries to smile in thanks for the honesty, but doesn’t quite manage it.

“It keeps changing,” he says. “Little parts of it.”

James settles in close against him, brow against his cheek, nose following the line of Danny’s jaw, gentle strokes, over and over.

“The dream?”

“Yes,” Danny says, then he shakes his head. “The trunk left marks on the floor.”

James says nothing. What can he say? He thinks of the elevator, how the catch got stuck because of the water, the rust filled with it and immovable, deadly, now, that the air had left it too. He thinks Alex would have fought. Anyone would have. Scared and alone and enclosed, any creature would claw until they had no strength left to move at all.

He should stop talking. He should. James doesn’t want to hear this, surely. He doesn’t want to have to piece Danny back together night after night, while he soaks his pillow in tears over someone else. Danny tries to bite his lips together to hold back his words but when he breathes they’re there again, fighting their way past his teeth.

“I sat on the floor beside him, and listened. His breath and his words were so loud,” Danny whispers. “Then I dream that I’m not close. I’m not there, I’m just - it’s like I’m watching it. Sitting in a chair and watching it all happen and all I can hear is…” Danny chokes back a pained sound, palms against his eyes and lights sparking again. “All I can hear is them, telling me to do this. It’s my doing, my work, my choice, my life again and again and I don’t know how, I don’t know how I could -”

James tenses and Danny swallows down the next sound, turning into him instead of away, burying his face against James’ neck when he raises his head and wraps his arms around Danny. James doesn’t tell Danny to stop talking. He does not console him with meaningless words. He just holds him because Danny wants to be held.

“My voice doesn’t even sound like my own in my dreams anymore. It’s like a radio, echoing and strange and lower. I can’t form them with my lips, I don’t remember how they taste but they’re mine, I know they are, who else would say them?”

James noses against him and closes his eyes, forcing his heart to beat steady when it wants to do anything but.

“Do you remember the attic?” He asks. “In your dreams?”

“It’s too light,” Danny shakes his head, sighing. “Too bloody light, it was never that light up there.” He laughs, then, helpless and little. “God, I can’t even bloody remember anymore. Dreams make everything starkly clear, though, don’t they? In their cruelty.”

James parts his lips against Danny’s hair and sighs warmth there, stirring his curls. Danny settles against him, the tremors finally working their way to stillness. He shivers now and then, and James reaches to drag the blanket over them.

“Our minds are capable of terrible things,” James agrees. “We forget things we want to remember. We remember things we shouldn’t.”

Danny breathes a note of laughter again, a joyless and tired sound, too old to come from someone so very young. “The man - Adler - he thinks I’m fucking with him,” Danny murmurs. “When I say I don’t know. Don’t remember. I’m glad I don’t. You know they say that in times of - of stress, the brain can just blink blink or blank? things out. I must’ve been that way, on autopilot. Setting the room up the way it was,” he says, shaking his head to quiet himself.

He holds his lips between his teeth again, heat burning his eyes until tears leak as if to cool him again. Danny’s shoulders hitch in a sob, grateful for James’ patience, for listening and being there and for rubbing his back when Danny whispers that he misses him.

He misses him so much.

James holds him close, cradles Danny against him as he cries, as he mumbles and whispers and sobs, and slowly, very slowly, falls back to sleep, held safe and secure against the man he loves.

Dreams have a tendency to show one memories they have ignored or tried to forget. Memories that one has seen and blanked out. The mind is a powerful tool, too often underused and too often taken for granted. James wonders if what Danny sees are things he truly does not remember seeing. He wonders if the confusion he feels comes from his own emotions, now, reliving it all again, or the genuine distress in being unable to remember.

He’s watched the interrogations. He has seen the way Adler deliberately turns the questions, again and again, to Danny’s memory or lack thereof. He has watched Danny’s brows furrow in agonized distress, not knowing what to do, what he can do, when his words are not believed, when no one is listening.

James is listening.

James will always listen.

Something tugs within James that makes him feel unwell, bringing on a headache he knows no medication will take away. It’s something he can’t control, something entirely too close to fear and he hates it. He faces down terrifying things and terrifying people daily, yet this is a fear of something far more sinister; he fears things he knows, situations he’s lived through. He fears the familiar - certain places, certain people, certain scenarios.

Danny’s fingers uncurl and his breath slows. A little shudder pushes him to stretch and settle again, asleep again but this time peacefully. James’ own rest doesn’t come to him again until nearly morning, and only then after he’s tried and failed to think back through the interrogations.

‘Questioning’, they call it.

Bollocks.

It’s a rare morning that he’s up before Danny, but he’s glad to feel him still heavy with sleep as James slides carefully from beneath his arm. He tucks the blanket up around him, lips brushing his brow. Danny makes a little sound and James hushes him warmly, before stepping away to close the drapes and darken the room again.

He takes his phone to the study, and calls Eve.

“James,” she murmurs.

“Moneypenny,” he says. “Sorry to wake you so early.”

“No, not at all. I’m always wide-awake at…” A pause, and then a sigh. “Five in the morning. On Sundays. What do you need?”

James’ smile quirks despite himself. “Why can’t I just call to say hello?”

“You can,” she allows, fighting down a smile of her own. “Preferably not on the weekend before the sun’s even up. You’re not a morning person, James. What’s the matter?”

“A favor.”

“I couldn’t be less surprised.”

“I need someone here for a few hours today.”

“Can I at least play with him this time?” Eve mumbles. James can hear her stifling a yawn against her wrist. “You were so strict on what I could and couldn’t say when I came over before, and he was such a spiky little thing.”

“I suppose you can try anything you like,” James tells her, smiling as he looks at the kitchen, the newspaper of the night before still spread on the counter with cold chips dotted here and there. “He’s still a mighty stubborn thing, though.”

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t you start.”

“James!”

“Hush.” He draws a hand over his eyes and smiles again - warmer, this time, softer. “Eve, please. It’s only for a few hours. There’s something I have to do, and I would rather it be you here than some idiot from admin.”

“Fine,” she sighs, and James can hear her shifting in bed as she gets up. “Fine, just… give me time to take a shower and -”

“I’ll make breakfast.”

“Charmer. Alright. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Go see to your stubborn boy before I do it for you when I’m there.”

“You’ve never given me a wake-up call like that.”

“You’re not as cute as he is,” she tells him with a smile. “Nor as cute as you think you are. Goodbye, James.”

The phone clicks off and he sighs against it. He’s glad she didn’t ask what he would be doing. He’s not certain he knows himself. But from precedence alone, the only way to scratch an itch like this is to get after it. His memory’s too shot to recall the details of the interrogations, focused on Danny throughout, but if MI6 is good at anything, it’s putting guns on cars and record-keeping.

At least it’s only the latter that he needs today.

He returns to the bedroom to dress, but the weight of Danny’s breath has lessened. James doesn’t bring attention to his wakefulness, all too aware of being watched, but content to let Danny do so. James is dressed all the way to needing only a tie and his jacket when Danny finally speaks.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to go in for a few hours,” James tells him. Knotting the tie and selecting a pin, he returns to bed and sits on it, reaching to stroke Danny’s hair, to accept the kiss against his palm. No half-truths. No lies. Not anymore.

“Shit with your boss?”

“When isn’t there?” James replies, smiling. He moves enough to rest against his shoulder and nuzzles against Danny’s nose before kissing the tip of it, smiling when Danny’s eyes close and his nose wrinkles. “I have a friend coming to stay here. Someone who will be far more pleasant company than the assholes they consider intimidating when I go on assignments.”

Danny snorts and rolls his eyes but he’s tense, still, eyes still red-rimmed and half open. James takes his hand and kisses it too, palm, then fingers, every knuckle.

“I will be back in time for lunch. Shall we go out to get it?”

Tracing James’ jaw with his knuckles, Danny smiles a little. “I should work, shouldn’t I? Sometime, anyway.”

“You should eat,” James tells him. “And you should let me take you out so I can be the envy of every man and woman in London.”

This earns another snort, but Danny’s smile doesn’t fade as quickly.

“It’s your choice,” James says in allowance.

“My work, my life, my doing,” murmurs Danny, and the words each strike a discordant note in James. He keeps his expression smooth. “My choice,” Danny says, “is to have lunch with you. I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”

“I’ll send you embarrassingly sappy messages throughout the day until I return, then.”

“Please don’t,” Danny laughs, holding a hand to his face, but accepting another kiss when James presses it to his skin. “Go. I’m going to sleep some more.”

“Good,” James smiles. “You need that too.”

He closes the door to the bedroom and waits in the kitchen, taking his time to set away the rubbish, to start eggs cooking and coffee brewing on the element over. By the time Eve arrives, breakfast is - as promised - made, and coffee steams in a heavy mug for her to take up.

“Moneypenny.”

“Bond.”

He kisses her cheek and Eve smiles, shoving him playfully towards the door. She doesn’t ask where he’s going. He doesn’t tell her. She merely takes up her mug of coffee and goes to sit in front of the balcony windows, looking out over the city as the front door closes and locks behind her.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Something flickers on the screen but it’s too pale to see, and James sits closer to try and make it out. The static hums something and he turns the dial for the volume, frowning when there’s nothing to hear but a louder hiss through the headphones. When he hears the first voice speak he nearly jumps out of his seat. He can see nothing but the screen and hear nothing but the quiet static that surrounds it._
> 
> _“Your name is Daniel Holt.”_

MI6 is never empty.

She never sleeps. She never rests. With her countless eyes on all the world, her innards shift with constant movement of agents and informants, administrators and engineers. At any given moment there’s countless operations at work across the globe. Some are invasive, like Bond’s own work, plunging directly into danger to cut short a threat or avert a crisis. Others are observational, tracking and monitoring and recording.

Even knowing that he’s not truly alone, James isn’t any less glad to hear his heels ring through the hollow hallways of the building’s bowels. Up through the garage, rather than by the front desk, it saves him the small talk but little else. Most likely, his off-schedule appearance will be noted without a ripple. He’s here often enough, known enough, and given high-clearance work enough that no one will pay him mind.

He’s counting on it, really, as he makes his way towards records.

Allen is at the desk, and he waves James in without question. He’s a good man, Allen, young enough to be easy to talk into a lot, smart enough to be here for more than his looks. A librarian by profession, still working towards his PhD and happy to have the quiet job that allows him to study as he works.

James brings him coffee, sometimes.

The records are kept in three places: one hard copy, stored and sealed away never to be seen again unless an active case opens up where information may be pertinent. James has never heard of the physical records being used in the time he’s been here, but regardless of that they are always made. The second is a recording, usually video as well as audio, for the analysts to go over, when the person being questioned is particularly difficult to pin down.

The last is merely the audio itself, and that is the one James seeks. Stored in enormous hard drives towards the back of the building, with computers set out specifically for access.

Password protected, of course.

Every visit and every record logged, of course.

James is given temporary logins, when he needs them, since it’s out of his department. Typically, he avails himself of the quick administrative capabilities of MI6, and has the information brought to him instead. A copy of a recording if he needs to hear a voice. A transcript he can read from the comfort of his couch.

“Allen,” James says, smiling with his eyes as he emerges back to the front desk.

“007,” he answers, clearing his throat to steady his nerves after the start James seems to have given him. “Good morning.”

“Morning. Alright?”

“Alright,” Allen says. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re going to have one over on me for this,” James says, “but I need a temporary.”

Allen’s eyes widen, and he puffs out a soft breath. “I can’t issue them. Comes from above me, they just hand them down.”

“Bloody Kafkaesque, isn’t it?”

With a blink, Allen laughs. “A little. You read Kafka?”

“Hasn’t every man been able to relate to waking up and feeling like a giant insect?” James asks. “Would you mind logging me in? I’ll only be a little while, and you can name your price for it. Coffee for a month,” offers James with a rueful smile. “It’s Adler’s job so you can put it under his name, but M’s going to have me over the desk if I’m not ready to go by tomorrow.”

Allen laughs and shakes his head but James knows it won’t take more than another goading literary reference to have him agree. It’s hardly a misdemeanor, people borrow and trade temporary accesses all the time throughout admin, and the information he seeks is no longer in an open case, and thus no longer at a clearance level he can’t reach.

But it does help to have Adler’s name attached to the thing, should anyone go peeking.

“Leaving it a wee bit late, 007.”

“I’m terrible,” James agrees, and smiles when Allen adjusts his glasses and seeks through his computer for the access number needed. He takes his time to check the appropriate information. No, Adler is not currently on an assignment or open case. No, none of his files in particular are restricted access. No, there is no note to suggest that James Bond cannot use his access.

Some do have a note.

James still smiles thinking about it.

Allen jots down a login on a post-it and passes it over with a smile. Taking the paper, James lifts a brow.

“Not very high tech, is it?”

“Bring it by me on your way out so I can shred it, and it’s as secure as can be,” Allen says.

“Unless someone puts it back together again.”

Allen gives him a dry look, the one that Bond is all too accustomed to receiving from virtually everyone in every department at this point, and he laughs. “I’ll bring it back,” James promises, and Allen tips his head in thanks. He turns to go.

“Wait,” Allen says. James stops, breath held, and pivots to regard him.

“Mr. Allen.”

“Coffee tomorrow,” Allen decides, and they share a grin before James carries on.

It shouldn’t make him so tense, sifting through recordings. Even the minor social engineering required to get at them is something that Bond practices daily. He isn’t breaking into a secure operation belonging to an enemy. He’s not trying to steal information or plant his own.

He’s in the MI6 building, where he all but lives, reviewing materials he’s got every right to see with the help of someone who knows him congenially.

It’s that itch again, prickling his nerves and shrinking his skin. As he settles to the desk and plugs in Adler’s information - resisting the urge to add the password as _isacompleteprick_ just for the record - he shakes his head to clear it. He widens the parameters to the last two months, lacking Danny’s case number, and searches for _Holt_.

He settles on his headphones when the files appear, and clicks play.

\---

“He called you,” Danny says, stepping out of the bedroom and wrapping his arms immediately over his naked torso. His pants and trousers hang against his hips and he draws a hand through his hair, trying to soothe it. Eve merely raises an eyebrow.

“It speaks,” she replies dryly. “Last time I was here I was convinced you were actually part of the computer you were typing on, you were so quiet.” She shrugs, standing to refill her cup. “And glaring.”

Danny laughs, shaking his head, and bites his lip. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” she says, setting the kettle to boil again. “I’d hardly have been in a conversational mood if I knew I was on house arrest for MI6. And with Bond, of all people.”

With a softer smile, Danny follows slowly towards the kitchen, bare feet clicking against the floor. “You’re Eve, right? Miss Moneypenny, I mean.”

“Both,” she assures him, lifting the kettle. “Tea?”

“Earl grey, if there’s any left,” he says. “He’s not so bad. The house arrest is mostly miserable, but he’s -”

“More than not so bad, from the look of things,” she says, brow lifted.

Danny’s cheeks warm, then his neck, down to his chest and it’s finally enough that he goes to grasp his hoodie - James’ once, but his now - from his nest on the couch. He’s still folding blankets, finding somehow seven of them all tangled together, when her heels tap neatly against the floor and she sets Danny’s mug on the table.

“Spill it, then,” she says, settling to the chair across from the couch. Danny’s lips part, brows raised, and she shakes her head. “Not that. I don’t need to hear about that. What’s he said about me?”

Her grin comes so easily that Danny almost envies her. She’s lovely - striking, really - and so comfortable that Danny feels the anticipation ease from his shoulders. Beside the tower of blankets, now folded, he settles to face her, drawing his legs up beside him and taking up his tea.

“He said you’re the smartest person at MI6 and no one else has got a clue.”

Eve smiles wider, her eyes narrowing in beautiful feline mischief. “Flatterer. He’s such a flirt. I bet he made sure to tell you the good things in case he needed to call in a favor.”

Danny bites his lip, amused and amazed all at once. “Have you -”

“God no, he’d be so lucky, ha.” Eve shakes her head, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs at the knee. She’s in stockings but has kicked off her heels, her skirt comfortably spread against her thighs where she sits. “No. Just very good friends.”

“He said you shot him once.”

“I did,” she replies, smiling, nodding her pleasure at the memory. “Off the top of a train, in Turkey. Saved him getting his head chopped off by the oncoming tunnel. He should thank me.”

“He said he’d let you do it again,” Danny says, grinning when she laughs, brash. He sips his tea and wipes his lips against his sleeve, cradling the mug in his lap. “‘Good shot, so long as the target’s not on a moving train.’”

“Sadly relegated to desk work now,” she says, “but good to know he’d be game for another go. Never know when that’ll come in handy.”

“Is it exciting?” Danny asks.

“Desk work? Terribly, keeping track of coffee and tea, who wants how much sugar in it…”

“All of it, I mean.”

She shrugs a little. “He certainly keeps things more interesting than they need to be, but it’s honestly much more an office than I ever expected it would be. Printers still break. Meetings still have to be attended.”

“You get to shoot people.”

“Only once in a while,” she grins, and then tilts her head towards him. Her gaze softens. A remark perched on her lips lingers and fades, washed away beneath another sip of tea. Danny can see what she wants to say. He can see why she doesn’t say it. He shifts a little, cushions squeaking beneath him as he tries to find comfort beneath the guilt that weighs his body strangely, and he lowers his eyes to his mug.

“Did you know him?” Danny asks, brow creased.

“I was never lucky enough,” Eve says. “Clever as James thinks me to be, I am nowhere near as clever as the boys and girls who run the operating divisions. Q Branch, planning, handlers, the mathematical elite.” She clicks her tongue and sighs. “They’re their own little cities in the Service, getting anything administrative out of them is a bloody nightmare unless I have my boss by my side barking orders at them.”

Danny smiles. Eve smiles back.

“I didn’t know him. But you did. And James knows you. And if you say he was a good man, a fair man, and if James says you are the same, then I believe it.”

Danny shakes his head, nose wrinkling not in pleasure but in gentle dismay. “I don’t deserve that,” he says, forcing himself to sigh out the breath that burnt in his lungs before he adds. “Thank you, though. You’ve all been very kind.”

She sips her tea and allows Danny the room to feel his own discomfort. He’s grateful, suddenly and enormously, for the compassion in this particular gesture, unknown by most, of knowing when not to speak. Danny’s never learned that skill. James certainly hasn’t. He breathes out again and lifts his eyes to her.

“Not all of us,” she finally says. “Adler’s been giving you hell, it seems like.”

“Yes,” Danny smiles, rueful. “Just doing his job, I’m sure.”

“I’m fairly sure his job requirements don’t include ‘being an unrelenting prick’ but I could be wrong.”

With a laugh, Danny lets his shoulders sink. He takes up the cigarettes from beside the couch and glances to Eve, who skillfully averts her eyes. Danny grins and lights one, sliding from the couch to open the door to the terrace, at least.

“Alright,” she sighs, sliding her feet up to the chair and watching him with amusement. “Since we’re keeping secrets together now, tell me how you met.”

“Well,” Danny says, eyes toward the ceiling. “He was apparently given the assignment of meeting and seducing me, which he accomplished with aplomb. I was very lonely, he’s unfairly handsome…”

“Charming.”

“Clever.”

“Vain.”

“God,” Danny laughs. “So vain, but it’s irresistible.”

Eve laughs, shrugging and shaking her head. “He is also a bloody terrible liar,” she adds. “Much as his work revolves around half-truths and misdirection, when it comes to outright lies, he’s hopeless.”

She watches Danny carefully for a response, and is pleased when his smile reaches his eyes and he brings the cigarette to his lips again.

“Yeah,” he agrees, sending a plume of smoke out towards the rooftops of London. “I know.”

\---

Two hours and nothing but disappointment later, James slumps back in his chair and considers the water stains on the ceiling. Nothing in the interrogation videos seemed any more or less off than the first time he listened to them, watching through the two-way mirror and clenching his fists in his pockets so as not to smash the damn thing.

He closes his eyes and brings a hand to them, pressing gently against the lids until he sees colors bloom.

_My work, my life, my doing…_

James frowns. Danny had mumbled in his sleep but the words were entirely unclear. He spoke them again in the morning and the same discomfort had crawled through James’ skin upon hearing it. It reminds him of fantasy integration, the gruelling training to stay awake for days at a time with a target in mind.

It reminds him of military-level work. Interrogation and indoctrination.

James blinks, slipping back in his seat and catching it with his foot before it can slide out from under him. He sets his fingers to the keys and enters different keywords into the system, extending the parameters up to a year back just to cover his bases.

_No results found for: society_

_No results found for: danny_

_No results found for: danny holt_

There’s results that appear for Alistair Turner’s name but they’re the ones James has already listened to, already seen transpire before him. Danny’s name in various iterations yields much the same. He’s shit at this, Bond knows, it’s not his forte and it’s why they’ve got a whole bloody Division in the Service to whisper into his ear what he’s supposed to search.

With a sigh, James slips his phone from his pocket. He taps to Danny’s message thread, smiling at the last, sent a few days before: a simple question of when Bond would be home again. The word fills him with warmth, and he wonders if Danny realizes that he used it.

_Kicking myself for leaving bed with you this morning._

James hits send but his thumbs hover over the screen. His phone is secure as one can be, while still being dutifully tracked by the computers of MI6. He hardly cares that they know they’re snogging - M, at least, would ruefully expect nothing less. But it’s curious to think that messages that should be private, in no way compromising security, would be monitored. He’s so accustomed to it that it’s almost alarming to think about at all.

He blinks, and sets his phone aside as he returns to the computer.

_No results found for: kali river_

James curses, shaking his head, and grabs his phone again to pull up a search. Pure reaction drives him, the same pulse of instinct that sends him upwards into collapsing buildings and skidding out of helicopters. The same rhythm that he finds when he’s in the middle of a firefight, in a terse negotiation, on the dance floor pressed to Danny’s body and moving to a song he’s never heard before.

Playing a hand of poker with stakes so high he could never have imagined what his win would cost him.

_Your search: kutiyangdi_

_26 results_

Ten more than the results of Danny or Alistair’s names. Ten more results than he’s found yet in seeking by blind intuition. James shakes his head and ignores the buzz on his phone for now as he opens the oldest file. It isn’t the audio player that appears, however, though static fills his headphones. The screen blinks black and fades in on a room cast in darkness but for an enormous screen, blazing bright.

Something flickers on the screen but it’s too pale to see, and James sits closer to try and make it out. The static hums something and he turns the dial for the volume, frowning when there’s nothing to hear but a louder hiss through the headphones. When he hears the first voice speak he nearly jumps out of his seat. He can see nothing but the screen and hear nothing but the quiet static that surrounds it.

“Your name is Daniel Holt.”

“Yes.”

“You know me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

James frowns harder, the leading questions are enough, sure, but the immediate obedience… he swallows and continues to listen, trying to make out Danny’s voice, the tone of it and the feeling. He sounds, if anything, incredibly tired. He doesn’t sound in pain, he doesn’t sound upset.

James lets the words filter through without listening specifically to them, just watching the pale screen flicker. This, too, like Danny’s words, bring back a sensation of a memory he has deliberately buried as far down into his psyche as he could. Memories of a lack of memories. Testing before arrival to Columbia for an assignment, warnings from Q Branch to be wary of easy women and games of poker with a heavy buy-in. 

They had run him through an exposure program for several weeks, trying to work up a resistance within him. It had proven futile. James only remembers feeling violently ill and being given a week to rest before he had been bundled off to South America.

Hell if he can remember what it was called.

A powder, bitter as the cocaine Bond has dutifully rubbed into his gums when undercover and building trust. It dried his tongue and his thoughts at once, whatever it was they fed him before M called an end to Q Division’s trials. The effects, however…

The effects, James has never forgotten.

He did at the time, blank spaces in his memory, but filled in later by footage shown to him when he demanded they do so. Stand, they said, and he did. Sit, they said, and he did. Take off your coat. Your belt. Put it around your throat. Remove it.

Anything they asked, Bond did without hesitation, rancor, or any response but to perform. He watched in anger, well beyond horror, as his body performed their tasks and he recalled none of it.

The screen within his own darkens. Danny stumbles as he enters the room, righted by the grip of the men who hold him by his arms. The small sound James can hear amidst the din of medical observations digs sharp between his ribs. He’s afraid, though he sits when they tell him to sit. He’s afraid, though he looks to the screen when they instruct him to do so.

“Tell me your name.”

“Daniel Holt.”

“Do you know Alistair Turner?”

“I know...” Danny pauses. James holds his breath but no cruelty comes, no strikes or more drugs or a blackout on the screen. “I know Alistair Turner,” he finally says.

“You are going to kill him.”

James watches the blurred image of Danny fretting with his hands together. He doesn’t twist them, he can’t, they didn’t tell him he could, but he’s trembling.

“I am going to kill him,” he repeats dreamily. Something on a screen flickers again and Danny’s eyelids mirror the motion. He swallows. He blinks again. The statement is repeated, and he repeats it back to them. Over and over, metronomic and frightening. James watches until the screen blackens and the hum of static skips to silence.

The lack of sound is as intense as a slap in the face, and James nearly pushes the computer from its station as he seeks to play the next tape.

_My name is Daniel Holt._

_I work for a corrupt Society._

_I am going to kill Alistair Turner._

\---

“I can’t imagine it,” she says, still laughing against the side of her hand. “I really can’t.”

“He did,” Danny tells her with a smile. “For hours.”

“Tell me he didn’t wear a suit at least.”

“I wish he had. He’d have been stared at even more.”

“You must be something special to get Bond out to a proper club,” Eve grins. “Was he any good at it?”

“Passable,” he says. “Entirely passable. Not his element, but he’s got enough…”

“Gravitas?”

“Mmm,” Danny agrees, ashing his cigarette into the remains of his tea and pointing at her with the stub of it. “That. He’s got enough gravitas that he doesn’t have to do much to get attention.”

“So much for house arrest,” she muses. Danny feels his smile falter and she blinks, then shakes her head. “No, no. Don’t give me that look. Come on, I’d not be here if he wanted reports on you. He’d have called in someone far more willing to work on a Sunday.”

Danny snorts and has to agree that that’s true.

It’s nearly lunchtime but Danny hasn’t found himself pining. Eve is wonderful company, clever and quick and as entirely happy to laugh at herself as she is at Danny. He’d finally convinced her to have a smoke with him, and they sit on the balcony, backs to either side of it, legs spread in the middle, mugs of tea long ago finished or half-finished and used as ashtrays.

“He’s a romantic,” Danny adds after a moment and Eve raises an eyebrow.

“You know, I hardly find that surprising. He has quite a reputation on his head in the service, but compared to some far lesser individuals who work there, he is far from a cock.” She points her cigarette at him, elegantly manicured nails framing it. “Don’t.”

Danny bites his bottom lip. Her eyebrows raise.

“I’m serious,” she says, but she laughs. “I’m serious, don’t - Danny, I’ve got to work with him. He’s my friend. He’s not, God, fine,” she sighs, head back against the railing. “Fine.”

“Fantastic,” Danny says, and both laugh, with nothing more needed to be said than that. He lights another cigarette with the prior, puffing smoke as he shakes his head. “Especially for a man his age.”

“I hope you’ve told him that. In those words.”

“I have. He acts like he hates it and it rankles him a little, but he loves it. Won’t tell me how old he is but -”

“Forty-three,” Eve tells him, dragging the vowels towards the sky.

“He’s not.”

“He most certainly is.”

“Dirty old man,” Danny decides, as Eve snorts her agreement. “But he’s not. Not really. Despite the twenty years difference…”

“Bloody cradle robber.”

“Despite it,” he says again, with emphasis, before easing back again to regard her with a soft smile, “or maybe because of it, he’s been wonderful to me. I’ve not been happy here,” he says, “for a long time. For most of the time I’ve been here, in fact. He’s been incredibly patient, living with a miserable wreck of a shut-in. Gentle. Thoughtful, all the time. Understanding in a way that I can’t imagine anyone else would bother to be.”

Eve gives him a smile, disposing of her cigarette only half-smoked. Danny watches as she cleans a spot of ash from her skirt, and meets her eyes.

“You’re not who I imagined works for MI6,” he says.

Eve tilts her head and uncrosses her feet only to cross them back the other way.

“You’re not who I imagined Bond to be babysitting,” she replies, the implication soft enough that Danny smiles, flicking his thumb against the filter of his cigarette. “You know, he likes you. A lot. Enough to turn the whole building upside down making sure you’d stay with him,” she says. Danny’s cheeks pinken and his eyes lower with a half-shrug. She doesn’t say more. She doesn't have to. Danny knows.

“Believe it or not, I was at university to be a curator,” she finally says, bringing a hand up to press against her lips. “No interest at all in being MI6, or any sort of field anything.”

Danny blinks. “How did you -”

“My boyfriend at the time dared me to join a fitness boot camp with him. Turns out I could kick his ass in every bloody category. It became a hobby. And a few years later, I graduated with my degree. Lost the boyfriend, gained an invitation to work for MI6.”

“Do you like it?”

“More exciting than museum work,” she says. “Not as intellectually stimulating, but there’s always time to go back to curation later. Ancient Egypt’s not going anywhere in a hurry, you know? There’ll always be something that needs cataloguing. It isn’t every lifetime someone gets recruited by Her Majesty’s Own.”

“Field work sounds,” Danny pauses and laughs, “terrifying.”

“It is. Was. Fantastically fun after the fact, once you’d skillfully evaded seemingly certain death. Gives you a whole host of stories to tell at the pub,” she grins, then shakes her head. “They just don’t take kindly to friendly fire, which I’ll grudgingly allow is a fair policy to keep.”

“Tell me.”

“What, a war story? Can’t.”

“Come on,” Danny whines, laughing as he ashes his cigarette over the balcony.

“Can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

“You’ll have to forgive my saying it, but I don’t even give my real last name to people I want to take to bed. Seems unwise to start spilling classified operations information to the likes of a party boy computer bloody genius,” she teases. “Even if he is very pretty.”

Danny lifts a brow and grins, stroking his thumb and the filter of his cigarette across his bottom lip. “So make something up then,” he suggests. “Every story, no matter how much is tweaked from the original, has a bit of the truth in it, yeah?”

Her eyes narrow, pleased. “Fine,” she relents. “Fine, but you owe me.”

“Of course, anything.”

“Next time you get him out dancing,” she laughs, “take me with you.”

\---

“Your name is Daniel Holt.”

“Yes.”

Five videos of the same repetitions, hours of them, the same blinking lights and barren room. His name and who he works for. What he’s going to do. And all the while, Danny who never stops moving, Danny that James knows squirms and wriggles ceaselessly, who he knows rebels against even simple instruction with as much reflex as breathing… Danny sits motionless. His voice is clear and calm. His breath is slow.

“You know me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“The Society.”

“You know what has to be done.”

“Yes.”

“You know you’re the only one who can do it.”

“Yes.”

“Now. It must happen now.”

Danny’s throat jerks and his legs twitch, and James isn’t sure if it’s a sign of obedience or resistance. Perhaps it’s both all at once. It’s as if a weight has settled over him, invisible but immense, to hold him in place. He makes a small sound, helpless and afraid, from deep inside.

The room goes dark. Danny’s eyes search the screen as it begins to color scarlet, the coils of a space heater glowing to warmth. Furrows in a wooden floor run pale to the base of an old-fashioned trunk.

“I have to,” he begins, but the words are out of sync with the crease scarcely shading his brow. They aren’t the words he wants to say. They’re the only words he has. “I have to kill -”

_Danny?_

James curses and sits back, hand against his mouth as he watches. The screen shows the attic, the camerawork handheld but surprisingly smooth. There is a microphone hooked up to the trunk itself for clearer sound, and Alistair - Alex - makes a helpless sound within.

_Danny? Danny, I can’t breathe, I’m afraid._

“You put him in this trunk,” comes the voice again, as Danny watches the screen, helpless, unable to look away.

“Yes,” he breathes, brows furrowed in confusion, hands pressing to his stomach.

“You were playing a game.”

“A game.”

“Very good.”

_Danny please -_

“He trusted you. He wanted to play.”

The trunk shudders and Danny gasps. When he blinks, tears glisten down his cheeks.

_Danny, I’m afraid._

“I have to do this,” Danny whispers. The chair beneath him rattles from his shaking as Alex’s breath grows shorter in panic.

“You laid your head against the trunk to listen to him. You sat beside him on the floor.”

_Please!_

“Alex,” Danny whispers, desperation rising high and unsteady in his voice. “Breathe, Alex.”

Two figures in tidy white coats enter to stand behind Danny’s chair, cast in red from the heater on screen. There’s no more than a coil of tension in Danny’s body, not even enough to lift him from his chair, before they step to either side of him. Turning over his arm, they wipe down his inner elbow. The plunger lowers on the hypodermic and as it does Danny settles again, motionless but aware, frozen but watching.

File six of ten.

Ten times they did this to him.

James makes himself watch every file. He sits through every one and watches Danny, as though somehow just that virtual presence will help him breathe easier. As though somehow he can make it right.

By the time he returns the little paper with the code to Allen, he can’t talk, he just sends the man a smile as promise of the coffee next time, and goes. He doesn’t take a cab home, he walks, hands in his pockets and head down and mind working a mile a minute.

He’d had this done to him but thought nothing of it. A test to build up resistance against scopolamine for work in the field, that never amounted to anything. But this… 

Lies within lies. Horrors and sickening suspicions come to light. Danny is adamant that he killed Alistair Turner. He is adamant that he was in that attic, holding to the trunk as Alistair died. And slowly, slowly, he is coming to terms with that truth.

What could James possibly tell him?


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Alistair Turner’s case has been closed,” M reminds Bond._
> 
> _He allows a smile in acknowledgment. “Perhaps then we should refer to it as the Holt case.”_
> 
> _“You seem to have taken a special interest in him,” responds the investigator, his emphasis delicately placed but not enough to go unnoticed. “How is Daniel holding up?”_

Danny’s hands circled softly around his wrist. Tugged backwards towards the bed until he sat, James turned to him and watched as Danny’s flushed lips spread across his knuckles, closing in a kiss against each in turn.

He’s always beautiful, but especially so in the morning. Hair skewed in a wild dark halo of curls, eyes heavy with sleep and cheeks ruddy with warmth and rest. James spread his fingers and ran the backs of them down Danny’s jaw, smiling when another kiss chased his touch.

“Is Miss Moneypenny coming again?”

James shook his head, amused. “Not today, unfortunately.”

With a sound of disappointment, Danny nuzzled back into the pillow, stretching down to his toes. “Maybe for the weekend, then,” he suggested. “For dinner or something. Not because she has to. If she can, I mean.”

“Maybe,” James allowed, unsurprised but altogether pleased that they hit it off so well. “I’ll ask once I’m on my way out today.”

Danny spoke of her in more glowing terms than James has heard him speak of anyone, and his fondness of her company carried into Danny’s sigh that morning. “When will they be here?”

“They won’t.”

Lips parting, Danny’s brow knit for a moment before he laughed. “So you’re staying, then.”

“Going in just for a bit, and then I’m entirely yours.”

“But no one’s coming?”

No. No one’s coming to babysit him, change his litter, or whatever other horrid terms they’d used. James phoned no one, and Danny had assured him - unnecessarily, but over and over again - that he would stay in the flat. That he would work. That he wouldn’t leave, not even to the corner shop.

It twists James’ stomach to think of it now. How readily Danny has taken to his confinement, knowing there’s no exit from it. How quietly he’s come to accept a fate he didn’t choose. A boy of twenty-three, prepared to live the rest of his life in service to MI6, and watch the world pass in puffs of smoke from their terrace.

“007? They’re ready for you.”

“Right.”

He straightens his suit though he doesn’t have to. He adjusts his tie, checks his cufflinks and keeps his eyes down as he strides into the office where the door is held for him. Once in, he raises his chin and regards the people within. 

He had asked for M to be present, though he’s entirely positive she knows what the meeting is for. And he had called for Adler, who sits, now, relaxed, in one of the heavy chairs M has before her desk.

“Bond,” he calls out, tilting his head as he rocks his foot back and forth idly. “I must say I did not expect you to be our third in this meeting. Our paths rarely cross for official business.”

“Even rarer for unofficial,” James notes, taking the other seat available and letting his eyes slip to M, who does nothing more than adjust the folder she has open before her, before closing it. “This is both, I think.”

“I’m assuming this is in regard to the Turner case,” Adler says, brows lifted.

“Alistair Turner’s case has been closed,” M reminds Bond.

He allows a smile in acknowledgment. “Perhaps then we should refer to it as the Holt case.”

“You seem to have taken a special interest in him,” responds the investigator, his emphasis delicately placed but not enough to go unnoticed. “How is Daniel holding up?”

“Admirably, considering the circumstances.”

“A very comfortable set of circumstances from what I understand,” Adler responds, wry. “Very unusual for a double-O to go into the witness protection business, especially since that’s not remotely within MI6’s jurisdiction.”

“MI6 has recently spread its jurisdictional reach, from what I can gather,” James replies smoothly, crossing one leg over the other, setting clasped hands into his lap. “From interrogation to gaslighting and manipulation. Murder.” He smiles tightly and tilts his head. “Same old shit presented in new and novel ways, right, Adler?”

“007.” M frowns, and James turns to her next.

“It’s all for the greater good, isn’t it, M? And I suppose I can’t argue it. Had the tests done on me to develop a resistance to scopolamine proved successful, a lot of missions in South America would have gone far smoother.”

Adler stops moving his foot, sitting very still and watching the agent who now sprawls comfortably before him, shoulders back and chin lifted as he refuses eye contact with either of them.

“A bit like champagne. An accident entirely, now so bloody popular. What’s that cliched saying? If you can’t beat it, join it? If no resistance could be established, then utilization is the next step?”

“007, what are you on about?”

“Kali River,” James articulates, passing his tongue over his bottom lip. “The Kutiyangdi files. I’m sure Adler would be much more qualified to fill you in, I only know the basics.”

Their gaze holds an instant too long, before Adler turns to M instead with a shrug. “I’m afraid I don’t know -”

“Bollocks.”

“Bond,” M responds, the clip of her tone quieting them both but not enough to sooth their bristling. “Explain.”

“A drug that nullifies completely one’s sense of self-preservation. A hypnotic in the extreme, inhaled through a powder. Paired with a paralytic administered at the same time, it’s akin to laying out a fresh sheet of paper on which you can write whatever you like directly into someone’s thoughts. Instructions. Guidance. Memories.”

“I remember the tests,” she says, watching Bond closely.

“When did we authorize it for use in interrogations?”

“As far as I know, we haven’t. It’s far too strong a substance to provide useful information out of someone in that state.”

“Programming operatives, then.”

“In limited and extraordinary circumstances.”

“Infiltrating a group of hackers, one in which we’ve already got plants gathering information, hardly seems to be an extraordinary circumstance. Daniel Holt is far from an extraordinary circumstance,” Bond says, as Adler tilts his head. “Alistair Turner, however, and his work would certainly qualify, wouldn’t it?”

“What are you implying, 007?” Adler asks.

“I’m implying nothing. I’m stating what I’ve seen,” answers Bond. “I’ve watched the Kutiyangdi files, Adler. Every hour of every recording wherein you and your Division convinced Daniel Holt that he murdered Alistair Turner. Torturing him,” he says, “until he saw Turner’s blood on his hands, and you could fill in the blanks with interrogations.”

Neither M nor Adler say anything for a while, and James allows them the silence. He is fuming, so angry he feels sick with it. He didn’t sleep the night before, cuddling up against Danny and relishing in his laughter when he squirmed in pleasure. He listened to him breathe, eased and comfortable, not tormented by drugs or pain or lies - not there. 

“That was a classified procedure.”

“Hardly,” James replies. “There was no clearance required when I accessed it in records. Anyone with a temporary code has access to the footage and the writeups afterwards.”

“Why were you looking, 007?” M asks. “It is hardly your jurisdiction. The boy is in your custody and that's the end of it, a conditional allowance of its own, I remind you.”

“He remembers,” James says. “Not everything, not details, but enough to suggest that his mind is stronger than you supposed it would be.”

This draws a look of concern from Adler, but equally in his narrowed is the kind of curiosity that Bond detests. It’s the same way doctors look at wounded things, with compassion secondary to sating their own interest. His stomach roils.

“There are two contingency plans in place for precisely this,” Adler says. “He undergoes another session -”

“No.”

“A simple matter of passing the substance to him through the solvents of which he’s already fond of filling his nose...”

“No,” James says, flat. He recalls the cold sweat that soaked Danny to shivering in his first nights at the flat. He shook so hard he wept as the drugs settled from his system. “Absolutely not.”

“Then the second option. We terminate the program,” Adler says, lifting a brow.

M bristles at this, gaze sharp. “You’re not suggesting -”

“That 007 do the job he’s best at? I am,” the interrogator assures her.

“Was it this easy for you when you decided to kill Turner?” Bond asks, voice low.

“Certainly not. He was a bright boy of enormous benefit to us. Holt is a convenience.”

“So he was merely collateral damage in the cold war against the Society?” James says, nodding. He funnels his anger into his hands that fiddle and turn over and over in his lap. He will not lash out or raise his voice. He will not give Adler the victory simply because he can approach a human life with such disregard and indifference.

“We have operatives infiltrating the network,” M says, and both men duck their heads in a nod.

“Right in the inner circle,” Adler replies.

“There is no inner circle,” James sneers. “There is no organization in an anarchic community. Things are planned, they filter down to the masses and they get executed. No one claims the glory for it. No one is anyone in that collective, they are everyone, anonymous.”

“You seem to have an intimate knowledge of its inner workings, 007,” Adler says, tilting his head and folding his fingers together. “Why is that?”

“Because I happened to ask the right questions and have the patience to wait for my answer,” Bond replies tersely. “I didn’t put words into the mouth of the man I was talking to.”

“Holt, in his current condition, has provided valuable information to us,” Adler allows. “We’ve been able to quietly close up several security breaches. Through him, we’ve successfully tilted their interests towards other areas. Other weaknesses, we’ve allowed to linger while removing particularly sensitive data. Give them a taste of victory, you know. But you raise precisely the point I’m trying to make. He’s replaceable. And if his treatments -”

Bond’s jaw sets. “His torture.”

“If they’ve begun to unravel, then it’s merely a matter of closing that breach like all the others. There are dozens of boys just like him, Bond. Hundreds. Eager to feel as if they’re a part of something. Eager to feel elevated above the fray - despite their claims of uniformity - when we take them aside.”

“You’re playing God with him. With all of them. What gives you the right -”

“Sounds like he’s starting to rub off on you,” Adler smiles, that particular emphasis set in place again, and M lifts a hand before Bond’s muscles can even tense.

“You’ll forgive me,” she says, sharp, “as this is far outside the work in our department, but why Turner? Everything I’ve seen about him indicates a particular brilliance and willing compliance.”

“You wanted his work,” Bond says.

“Yes. And keeping it directly would have lead to significant personal difficulties with other intelligence groups. Imagine if you will the interest in such a thing - a lie detector on such a grand scale that we need simply run it against any recording, any video, speech, security footage to discern the truth of statements beneath. Imagine the secret wars that would have risen against MI6, in particular, if they received word we’d kept it.”

“So you pass the blame to an extra-government organization,” James says.

“A group with loyalty to nothing - to no one - but themselves,” Adler reasons.

James sits forward, then, and though M tenses, purses her lips, he does nothing beyond adjust his position as he watches Adler.

“Havoc,” he says after a moment. “You apply their own methods against them.”

“People are powerless against something they so strongly believe in.”

“You have made yourself like them,” James points out. “Anarchic, ruthless, above the rule of law. You have killed a young man and tortured another near to madness for what? To protect your own hides? To protect a theoretical mathematical concept?”

“It is far from theoretical -”

“You’re not human.”

“It’s for the greater good,” Adler replies, and the room hums with the silence that follows.

James lets the words settle, all of them - ugly truths and validation of all that he suspected and all that Danny has tried to fight against. In fits and starts, Danny has begun to heal from unconscionable torment, the blood of his lover painted onto his hands by another, washing away a little more each day that he is allowed to live. To breathe. To go to the park and watch the pelicans, or go to the club and dance. But wild things kept captive - tightly confined and goaded to perform - suffer. They stunt. An hour of freedom does little to let their strength grow and ease the stress forced upon them.

He recalls the press of Danny’s lips against his knuckles, and how quickly Danny assured James that he wouldn’t leave the flat for anything. He’d sit and work until he was told that he can stop.

He’ll never be allowed to stop, until they pull the plug.

“I appreciate your honesty,” James says, genuinely, before he turns to M. “And I hope you’ll forgive that under the circumstances, I must tender my resignation and take an early retirement.” He parts his lips with his tongue, a soft smile gathering beneath his eyes. “And so will Mr. Holt.”

M draws a sharp breath but it is Adler who speaks.

“You cannot answer on behalf of him.”

“Of course I can,” James says. “He is in my custody and under my protection. An equivalent to a legal guardianship were he a minor.”

“He has work to do!”

“On what grounds?” Bond smiles. “You held him with the promise of prosecution should he fail to deliver to you the intel you required. You no longer have that over him. There is evidence, recorded and archived, that proves that he was never in the attic when Alistair Turner died. Not only that, but that he was forced to witness it, and drugged to believe that he was a killer when he was entirely innocent of that crime.”

“This is absurd.”

“A grave of your own digging, Adler.” James’ smile is warmer, now. The adrenaline that built up within him for the hours he spent at home, the moments he spent outside M’s office finally begins to fade, leaving weariness and relief. “Now, if you’ll excuse me -”

“007.” M watches him stand, gestures for him to take his seat again. “If you will. Just a moment more to detain you before you inevitably follow your own heart regardless of sage advice. Mr. Adler.” She turns cool feline eyes to him, next. “There will be an investigation of your department, specifically the use of scopolamine without authorized consent. I suggest you prepare yourself. You may go.”

So dismissed, Adler stands. He takes his time to do the buttons on his suit, he does not look at either M nor 007 as he leaves, a deliberate slam of the door his only retaliation against the two of them.

“Childish,” M sighs, bringing a hand to her face to rub her eyes before setting her hands to the desk and pushing herself to stand. “Entirely expected from a man of such low calibre and unending rudeness.”

She moves to get the crystal bottle of scotch, two glasses, before returning to take her seat again.

“Do you intend to reveal your discoveries to Mr. Holt upon your return home?”

“I intend to pry his computer from him and buy him one that isn’t fed directly into that man’s system. I intend to tell him that the charges are dropped entirely, and that he’s free to do what he likes.” He accepts the glass that M pours for him, thumbing across the familiar notches patterned into it. How many nights they’ve spent, before and after assignments, always boss and employee, but friends, too. It strikes James suddenly that he may not see her again after this, and he eases the fleeting ache with a sigh.

“You don’t think I should tell him about this,” James asks.

“What is the reason to do so? If he’s free either way, kept safe beneath the auspices of your knowledge and history with us.”

Bond watches her as she settles. “Absolution,” he says, washing the word down with a sip of scotch.

M regards him and does not drink from her own glass. After a moment she turns her head towards the window and watches London instead. Before her, James finishes his drink. He doesn’t ask for another. 

“As headstrong and stubborn as you are, 007, I would like to lay something down for your consideration before you hand in your paperwork,” she says. James sits up straighter and watches her until M turns back to him once more. “Consider what this boy is tormented by, and what was the one thing that began his process of healing.”

Bond blinks, wondering if the question is rhetorical. More often than not, M answers her own questions. Content to appear aloof and unapproachable to any number of staff in MI6, she is far too clever, and knows far more than she ever lets on.

“When Vesper lost her life in Venice...” M ignores the immediate tension in James’ shoulders as she continues. “I remember the report you filed with us. You wanted to leave then, too, and I would have let you if you hadn’t withdrawn your paperwork before it could be signed. You said that she had attempted to absolve you of your guilt because you stayed with her and you did not let go of her hand.”

James feels himself tremble, an involuntary response that floods him and makes him feel helpless, like a child, as though he’s been doused in freezing water.

“In her eyes, your staying, your lack of indifference, your love and dedication to trying to save her, was enough to warrant forgiveness of your inability to save her.”

“Vesper has nothing to do with this.”

“James, you are no fool, we both know that.” M takes a slow sip of her scotch and caresses the glass when it’s on the table once more. “Daniel Holt holds on to the notion that Alistair Turner forgave him his cruelties because he did not leave him to die alone. That is the only thing he clings to as he allows himself to heal. What kindness would it be to tell him that he was never in the room with him?”

“He would know he did not kill the man he loved.”

“And he would know that the man he loved died alone,” M points out. “No one holding his hand or murmuring his name.”

Only thanks to years of practice honing an appreciable poker face can James swallow back the tension that builds in his throat. Alex called out for Danny from inside the trunk. He begged him to help. What they told Alex, how they pulled it off, James doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t care anymore, but to know that Alex thought Danny responsible for this twists the knife deeper. Danny’s absence salts the wound. Lying in bed and waiting for a call that would never come. Imagining the life they might have spent together, as his lover died and called for him.

In Danny’s mind, as he learns to live with the guilt of his lover’s death, he was there to whisper. He was there to console. He could press close to Alex in his final moments and tell him that he loved him.

Were Vesper told that James arranged her death, as he awaited her at home unknowing, he’s not certain he wouldn’t have tried to follow her.

An inclination of his head is all the acknowledgment that James can give, and M accepts it with another sip. “It is a thin kindness for one who has suffered so much already,” she says. “But better that than further loss, in taking away the last moments he imagined they shared together. You may take as much time as you need. I’ll see to it personally that his file is closed and his tenure as an informant ended. I wish you’d reconsider retirement.”

James snorts and shakes his head.

“I’m three years out, already.”

“Three useful years should you wish to stay,”

“And calm ones should I wish not to.”

M hums then, a brief and tense sound as she finishes her drink. “You will grow bored.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And fat.”

“Your faith in me has always been an astounding support, M.”

He knows she smiles even though the glass hides it, and James averts his eyes when she sets it down so she can compose herself back to cool apparent indifference. He will miss her, if nothing else. The job? Of course. Such surges of adrenaline would need to be remade with new activities, none of which would ever come close to the rush of working for MI6.

But he cannot stay knowing departments work independently in such a way, harvesting information from people unable to resist giving it.

There is no good and evil, anymore, there never has been. He’s jaded enough, now, to know that. Quietly, he pushes his chair back and stands, buttoning up his jacket and smoothing it with the palms of his hands.

“I expect your paperwork on my desk no later than Thursday,” M tells him.

“Ma’am.”

“Oh, don’t you start that now,” she scoffs. “Two decades without it when I wanted the title and one day, now, when I never want to hear it from you.”

“Afternoon, M,” he says instead. He turns to go, Moneypenny’s eyes wide with curiosity as he exits, closing the door behind.

“Oh, and Bond,” M says.

He turns back with a lifted brow.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she adds, with damn near the most open smile he’s ever gotten from her. He returns it, warmly, before he lets the door close.

\---

When it clicks shut, Danny looks to James, upside down. He’s contorted himself into another creative position of yoga-computing, on his back with his legs folded against the arm of the couch. His computer glows from damn near above him, blankets bundled around and over him. Slipping his headphones free, his attention slips to the package that James sets on the counter, then back again to watch as he removes his jacket.

“Told you I’d be good,” Danny says with a grin.

James smiles, taking the steps necessary to reach him and kiss him upside down where he rests.

“I had no doubt of it.”

“Liar.”

“What you and I do in bed,” James grins, “hardly has to echo in our everyday lives.”

Danny laughs and turns to his screen again, making a small sound of dismay when James takes the computer from him and folds it closed.

“I was working,” he sighs, tilting his head as James takes the computer to set to the counter and brings the package with him when he returns, setting it to Danny’s belly for him to open. His fingers spread across the neatly wrapped silver paper, and he turns to sit upright, blankets spiralling around him. “What is it?”

James gives him a dry look and Danny bites his bottom lip to contain his grin. He slips apart the tape and peels the paper back, scarcely peeking beneath before he laughs. Then he peeks again, and holds the side of his hand against his mouth, laughing again. His nose wrinkles and he shakes his head, revealing the sleek new laptop inch by delicious inch.

It’s delicious, top of the line in every way and ready-made for programming and modification alike. An enviable machine, many - _many_ \- pounds outside anything Danny could afford, without redistributing wealth from others’ credit cards to his own account. He licks his bottom lip between his teeth and makes a warm sound, fingers stroking across the box.

His brow furrows.

“I can’t,” he says, the sentence hitching before he forces his breath to ease again. “I can’t use this. The agreement I signed, there was a clause - I’m not allowed to use another computer unless they modify it. It nullifies the agreement.”

Danny lifts his eyes, sadness tightening his chest, palpable in the shortness of his breath before he manages a smile. “I can bring it into them, let them add all their hardware to it. It’s beautiful,” he says, almost an apology. “Thank you, James.”

Another kiss against Danny’s brow, and James slips his fingers over Danny’s to hold them. He thinks of what he could tell him, he thinks of sitting down before him and explaining everything he has seen, everything that transpired. No more lies and no more half-truths between them, as promised.

He thinks of their conversation, of his own examples of the Enigma discovery, the greater good, damned though the term may be.

“I spoke to M this morning,” he says, smiling when Danny blinks at him. “My superior. She has decided to end your tenure as an informant.”

Danny’s eyes widen and he blinks again. “What?”

“Several previous leads that we had tenuously held came through. Our people have been infiltrating the Society for months. We finally have a connection we can use.”

Danny’s lips part and he curls the bottom one between his teeth. “What does that mean for me?”

James just looks at him, reaching to stroke his hair. “It means it is entirely your choice if you would like to stay here for dinner, or return home this evening.”

“We can go there if you like,” Danny says, brows knit even as he smiles. “I don’t think there’s any food, though. Or not any that’s good by now.”

His confusion is so genuine that it’s beyond disbelief and into a subconscious denial. James’ chest aches. Whether from the drugs or the psychological pressure, Danny’s once wild fire has dimmed. He truly doesn’t grasp what James is saying, because there is no exit for him. There is no life for him outside of performing as a conduit, to be monitored and periodically adjusted.

James wonders if it isn’t too late to go back to headquarters and knock Adler across the jaw, at least once.

“You can go,” James says, “wherever you like. With or without me. Whenever you want. You’re not under house arrest. You don’t answer to them anymore.”

“But they -”

“It’s done, Danny. All of it.”

As if plunged into ice water, Danny’s breath leaves him. The burden that was his to bear lifts so suddenly that he’s dizzy. This was meant to be his existence. He forfeited everything else. His lips part but he doesn’t have words to fit between them, and as his hands begin to shake, he grasps the computer he’s been given - a fresh start, a clean slate - and holds James’ face in his hands instead.

Wordless, breathless, Danny goes numb to all but the tears that torrent hot from the corners of his eyes and the feel of James’ lips beneath his own.

James kisses him, soothing the tears from the corners of his eyes even as more come. Gently, he takes the computer and set it to the floor, levering himself up to lie on the couch beside Danny and hold him close. Danny nuzzles against him, clinging to his shirt, saying nothing and simply trembling in relief and disbelief and delight against the man he loves.

James holds him, kissing his hair, nosing against warm skin.

Moments pass and those turn to hours, and after a while both just doze on the sofa together. Nowhere to be and nowhere to go, no deadlines to meet and no one to answer to - either of them.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He always comes home. He always presses against James and tells him he’s missed him. He teases him for staying up until early morning awaiting him, and not once does Danny tell him to stop._
> 
> _He hopes he never does._

It’s been one surprise after the next.

A new computer and a fresh start. A quiet conversation shared over dinner in which James disclosed that he, too, no longer answers to MI6. A much shorter conversation in which both discussed what they want, now that the forces that brought them together no longer hold them so.

Danny wants to be with James, not because they’re forced to be.

James wants to be with Danny, because he loves him.

Danny runs rampant for a time, starting with giddy forays out to the shops and building into nights at the bar - with Eve, to no one’s surprise or displeasure. He stays out late, sometimes with James or Eve or both, and sometimes without. More than once he comes home drunk and exuberant that he’s allowed to be.

But he always comes home. He always presses against James and tells him he’s missed him. He teases him for staying up until early morning awaiting him, and not once does Danny tell him to stop.

He hopes he never does.

And as Danny sprawls now before the fireplace of a private chalet in St. Anton, he turns toward the sound of the door opening. Another surprise. Another new experience to share. He lets slip closed the pages of the book he brought, his computer left behind in London. 

Another piece added to a life he’s allowed to shape however he wishes, and with James’ hands over his own to help.

Half-empty bottle of wine in one hand and the other propping him up, Danny draws himself up to sit on his hip, watching James shake the snow from his hair and lift his goggles. Clad in sleek, expensive black athletic wear, James lets his skis rest beside the door, dropping snow that melts quickly against the heated wood floor.

“Tomorrow, you’re coming with me,” he says. Danny grins.

“You keep saying that.”

“I mean it this time. You’ll fall on your arse until you’re sore but we’re not leaving Austria until you’ve come down the slopes with me at least once.”

“You’re not especially convincing when you put it like that. There’s better ways to make it hard for me to walk, you know.”

James snorts as he steps closer, but he stops - jacket half-off - when he takes in the young man before him. Danny wears nothing at all, feline and delighted on a wide white sheepskin rug laid before the roaring fire. He lifts a brow.

“I see I’ve made my point,” Danny primly declares, stretching his shoulders wide with pleasure as he’s watched.

“You’re a bloody terror,” James tells him, slowly shrugging his jacket off the rest of the way and tossing it over the back of the couch. He continues to watch the beautiful coy thing before him, so comfortable in his own skin, now, so much healthier - so much more rested and relaxed than when James had first met him.

He is lovely.

James wants him always.

Needs him, now, more than he ever thought he could need another.

He takes off the rest of his winter gear, waterproof trousers and heavy boots and scarf. He is left only in his jeans and woolen sweater, and so clad he bends his knees and sets his hands to the rug and leans in to kiss Danny on the lips.

“I missed you,” he whispers.

“You’ve only been gone a few hours,” Danny grins, turning to sit on his bottom, hands behind him as James pursues with a hand against his cheek.

“Far too long, even after sleeping most of the day away.”

Danny tries to avoid the kiss that follows, as happy to play hard-to-get as James is to get him anyway. Laughing, Danny curls his fingers against the fluffy sheepskin as James kisses the corner of his mouth, his cheek, nosing against his hairline and dropping a lingering kiss against his pulse. Danny’s heart beats faster, a soft moan carried on his sigh.

“Got a call earlier,” he murmurs, toes curling and grin tilted crooked. “Mum’s flat sold.”

“Already?”

“Unsurprising, considering the location. I told them it was probably bugged but for some reason, I don’t think they believed me.”

“It will be quite a surprise then,” James tells him, nosing against his collarbone next. “Added bonus.” He can see Danny getting hard, as turned on by this silly game as James is, as content to be fucked to languid stretches and happy dozing once more. The news, too, strikes a lovely warmth in James’ chest.

The flat sold.

Unless Danny buys another, he will live with James.

He feels giddy at the thought.

“Clever boy,” he sighs, pressing a kiss to the curve of his neck. “What else have you done today?”

“Thought about all the work I won’t need to find with that windfall,” Danny laughs, pushing back across the rug.

He’s brought back by a firm hand against the small of his back. James tugs him close, nuzzling alongside his nose. Their lips nearly touch, so very close, again and again as Danny leans back further and further, grin widening every time he avoids it.

“Read my book,” he says, as fluffy pelt spreads beneath his back. “Had some wine. Thought about you.”

“Amidst everything else.”

“Missed you,” Danny grins, nose wrinkling.

“You know you might have avoided that if you’d come with me.”

Danny cups James’ cheeks in his hands and takes him in, holding himself up above Danny with capable - and intoxicating - strength.

“But if I’d done that, when would I’ve had time to touch myself, moaning your name into the empty bed?”

James groans, a low and humming sound, before ducking his head and finally pinning Danny down with a kiss. One hand catches in his curls and he tugs them straight, arching Danny’s head so his kiss can slip sloppy to his chin and down to his throat, where James delights in deliberately sucking a bruise against Danny’s skin.

Both have taken to their freedom with new-found youthful vigor. Neither hold any bounds to what they can do together. They travel, they enjoy lavish dinners and simple ones, they decorate the flat and watch television curled up together on the sofa.

They go dancing.

They go skiing.

James bites just behind Danny’s ear and laughs as Danny does, surprised and lovely. “Dreadful.”

“You love me,” Danny snorts, curling his fingernails against James’ scalp and raking downward to feel him shiver.

“I do,” agrees James. The breath against Danny’s ear earns James a shiver in return.

“Enormously. Terrifically. To the point of absolute distraction -”

“You’re a bloody distraction,” James mutters. He turns Danny to face him with gentle fingers against his chin, and with a smile against his lips, whispers, “Hush.”

Danny quiets his words, but that’s all he quiets. A moan, high and whimper, pushes into their kiss as his entire body tenses in a ripple of pleasure. Cock filling, Danny ruts against the rough fabric of James’ jeans. He grasps at James with fluttering fingers, tugging at his clothes in an attempt to bare him, unable to do so when James lays heavier against him. The fire’s almost too hot beside them, and the soft fleece beneath Danny’s body tickles his skin where it brushes.

Finally, James breaks their kiss to help Danny yank his sweater off of him, his shirt following, his belt after that. He laughs and catches Danny’s hands as they seek against his trousers and kisses the palms, one after the other, nuzzling the fingers that curl against him.

“I love you,” he tells Danny again, as the other squirms, spreading his legs around James and arching up to be closer to him. When his hands are freed, Danny works open the button and the zipper. Head ducked and panting in the warm space between them, he watches James hard beneath his pants, just the tip of his cock sticking up dark and slick above the waistband.

Danny lifts his eyes and lowers his hands. Palms pressing flat down the plane of James’ belly, he slides them beneath his pants and pushes firm against his dick. Rubbing from head to balls and back again, Danny closes his eyes and bends upward, leaving a mark of his own on James’ throat. Sucking firm, his legs squeeze James’ hips as Bond’s groan ripples warm through Danny’s curls. When he arches, his knees slip James’ jeans a little lower, again and again as their bodies find a lazy rhythm together.

James’ cock fills thick beneath his fingers, twitching and pulsing in counterpoint to the pressure of Danny’s hands against him. Veiny shaft and delicate foreskin, dripping slit and tightening balls. James’ hunger for this contends with Danny’s own, both seeming forever starved to join their bodies again and again. They delight in attempting to exhaust the other. Neither have yet to feel the tug of boredom that comes with a poorly fitted partner.

“I love you,” Danny whispers. His breath cools the wet marks left by his mouth and James snares him by his curls, bending their mouths together. Long lashes hooding his eyes, Danny’s nose wrinkles with his grin. “I imagined you on top of me, fucking me flat into the mattress until I came all over the sheets.”

“I’m going to come in your hands if you don’t stop,” James whispers against his lips.

Danny curls his fingers and fans one after the next across the sensitive bared head of James’ cock. He bites his lip, and releases it, whispering, “What did you imagine?”

James’ arms tremble where he holds himself up, watching Danny with hooded eyes. He is half-dressed and hard as hell and smiling down at the most beautiful young man he has ever laid eyes on, and ever would again.

“I imagined taking you into my mouth,” James whispers, arching his back as Danny starts to undress him. “Sucking so softly that you’d squirm, pushing up against me, wanting deeper and harder and more.” Danny grins and James lowers himself to kiss him, pushing up again after. “I imagined bringing you over, just like that. And then -”

“And then?”

James grins, wriggling free of his trousers and pants. “And then I would turn you to your belly and lick you open, and take you hard until you came again.”

Danny hums, pleased, and the sound lifts his body upward from the rug. He hitches his legs against James’ ribs and pushes his toes into his trousers and pants both, pushing them down and using them to brush his cock against James’ firm stomach. A little writhing finds them both bare, clothes strewn over expensive, sleek furniture, snow melting to the floor.

“Sure you don’t want dinner first?” Danny teases, curling his arms around James’ neck and laughing as he slips from beneath to kiss his hairless chest.

“No,” James answers. Danny shivers, whimpering against his bitten bottom lip as James watches him, and marks a steady line of kisses down his chest to his quivering stomach. Tickled, delighted, Danny tries to set his feet to the rug and squirm up across it, but James’ hands hold his hips in place and Danny moans.

“God,” he groans, “I love it when you manhandle me.”

James presses a sucking kiss to Danny’s stomach in answer. He lets him go enough to squirm again, shift and arch and turn, and catches him when he does. Over and over, until Danny’s panting and James is grinning and pressing his lips against the wiry hair at his groin.

In any form and every way, James has always loved pleasuring with his mouth. There is such a worshipful aspect to it, bending to take another between your lips, working your tongue and breath to please them. It is as selfless as an act of sex can get, and at any opportunity, James has enjoyed bestowing that adoration on Danny.

Now, he sucks against the base of his cock, kisses slowly up the shaft of it to the swollen head, tonguing teasingly against the slit before enveloping the foreskin with his lips and letting his eyes close in pleasure. Danny’s voice cracks, snapping high as he moans. A curve of movement carries up from curled toes to bucking hips and rests in his shoulders, shoved against the floor to bridge his body upward.

James is beautiful like this. Eyes heavy-lidded, head bowed as if in reverence, Danny watches in trembling wonder as his cock presses thick and throbbing past James’ lips. It isn’t an act performed as means to an end. James’ pleasure in this is transparent, from the bend of his reddening lips and the shadows in his hollowed cheeks to the press of his fingertips against the soft interior of Danny’s thighs.

He sucks Danny deep because he wants to, not because he’s obligated. He does it for the thrill of making Danny feel good.

And he does. Oh, he does.

Every flick of his tongue yields a scatter of goosebumps across Danny’s limbs. Every noisy suck tightens his stomach in a wave of pleasure. Every hum echoes in Danny’s wanton moans and he fucks gently into James’ mouth until he’s trembling and has to scrabble to grasp his hair as leverage.

James lets him go, then, to a displeased groan from Danny, to suck his balls into his mouth instead. Meticulously working the silken skin between his lips, over and over, James works Danny to just as high a hysteria before, again, pulling away.

“You bloody tease,” Danny whimpers, smiling when James kisses against his thigh and seeks lower still with his skillful tongue.

Here, he takes his time to make sure Danny is not only trembling, but leaking clear against his stomach, lips parted red and wide, eyes barely open and breathing quick. He is lovely. He is so entirely beautiful, every lean muscle alight with life and his pulse beating wild. James pulls back and slips his arms beneath Danny’s back to lift him forward, kneeling up himself so Danny can lean against him, nuzzling him as soon as he’s close enough.

“Shall I take you to bed?” James whispers.

Skinny limbs slip around him in answer, arms over his shoulders, legs around his waist. Danny rubs his smooth cheek against James’ stubbled jaw and mouths against his cheek. With agile movements, and always careful, James works his way from the floor with Danny held against him. There is an enormous comfort - and arousal, admittedly - in James’ strength. Danny feels safe with him, protected in the increasingly rare moments where his paranoia hums and he wonders if they aren’t a silenced shot from losing the other.

James always settles him again, by holding him close, or reassuring with a brush of fingers against his skin. James always knows. He always understands. Both know more about the other than anyone else alive, their good days and their bad equally familiar. James knows that even when Danny writhes away from him, he wants to be pulled close. Danny knows that when James puts space between them, he simply needs to be near and present until the moment passes.

And then there’s everything in between. Normal days, domestic days. Both still surveying the world laid before them from their new and shared perspective - James entering his retirement, and Danny entering the rest of his life.

A quick snap brings Danny up from the floor and he laughs, helpless, when Bond’s dick prods stiff against his bottom and he’s carried away from the rug.

“You’d better take me to bed,” Danny agrees, though they’re already on their way there, across the sprawling chalet. “My fingers were hardly enough to stretch me wide as I want to be.”

James curses softly and kisses him, walking sure and slow back to bed before depositing Danny atop and crawling after him.

Both laugh as their noses bump and they squint at each other. Danny wriggles to be on his stomach and James catches him to keep him on his back. Both are hard, both squirming close together to feel that pleasure in sparks and tingles against each other. 

“No matter how deep,” James promises him. “How hard, how long, nor how you may limp tomorrow morning, I am going to take you to ski with me.”

“You can’t actually make me,” Danny snorts, rocking in lazy, languid thrusts against James’ cock. Their skin is flushed, warmed by laying by the fire bare for so long. The room around them is chilly by compare, but everywhere their bodies touch burns beautifully.

“That sounds like a challenge, Mr. Holt.”

“It bloody well is, Mr. Bond,” scoffs Danny, attempting to turn again and laughing as he’s kept on his side. “You’ll not get me strapping boards to my feet to go hurtling off a mountainside.”

James ruts firm and steady against Danny’s side, leaving precome slick in thin trails across his hip. Danny coils his knee against the bed to tempt James into thrusting lower.

“Promise me a thermos of hot toddies and I’ll watch you go instead,” Danny offers, brows lifting beneath wild, soft curls of hair. “You’ll not be able to pry me off you once you come back whole, though.”

James sighs, pretending to be put upon, and turns Danny more comfortably on his side, sliding up behind him and rocking teasingly against his ass.

“I shall have to lose my balance and fall, then.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“For you to chase me down the mountain? I would.”

“You’re a fool.”

“For you? Always,” James promises, kissing Danny's cheek and nuzzling his hair as he lines his cock up to tease against Danny's entrance.

Danny bends himself deeply, grinding back against James’ length to feel it slip between his cheeks. Watching James across his shoulder, he’s left just as breathless by the sight of him as he is by their shared arousal. Heavy-lidded gaze and cheeks just a little ruddy, James’ mouth curves warmly across his shoulder in slow, serene kisses, dizzyingly at odds with the firm rubbing of their lower halves. He reaches back to take James’ hand and slide it up over his heart, and then spits against his palm and stretches back himself to slick James’ cock and press it to his opening.

“Promise not to laugh,” Danny insists.

“At this? Never.”

“At me falling down all day.”

“I won’t,” James says, though Danny snorts, grinning.

“Bollocks. You won’t promise that, you mean,” he teases, shuddering so hard his toes curl when the tip of James’ cock presses blunt against him. “At least promise you’ll save me when I fall. Promise me that.”

James spreads his fingers over his chest and gently curls them inwards, pressing his teeth lightly to Danny's shoulder as he slowly pushes into him.

“Promise,” he manages, eyes half open and own body trembling in pleasure as he fills Danny entirely and feels his heart race beneath his palm.

He never imagined that they would have this. That they would have Austria and freedom and a fire in a cabin. He had never imagined that they would leave London together. He had never hoped - no… no he was always hoping. Always wanting them to have this together to share.

And now they do.

James pulls out just as slowly as he had sunk in, and nuzzles against Danny's neck.

“Push back, darling,” he whispers. 

Danny aches a small sound and splays a hand against the mattress. He pushes his whole body at once, his back to James’ chest, heart drumming against his ribs and James’ fingers on the other side. Back deeply bent, his lips part on a puff of air and a groan as he sinks himself slowly onto James’ cock. The stretch hurts, despite how frequently and enthusiastically they fuck, but Danny likes it. The friction burns, with nothing but spit to slick the way, but Danny likes that too.

Both tested clean, now committed only to the other, Danny whimpers as James pushes deeper inside. Sensitive skin against sensitive skin, in little jerks and twists of his slender form, Danny presses back until James asks him softly to hold and wait. And then he fills him to the hilt.

Hardly capable of taking a breath, his body so full, more fire-hot than it was beside the fireplace, Danny gasps in hitches of sweet little noise. James nuzzles into his hair and kisses the back of his neck. He rubs his chest, work-rough fingers spanning over tiny peaked nipples.

“God, you always feel so bloody good,” Danny whispers, words rough and low and enough to draw a smile from Bond behind him. James gently takes a nipple between his fingers to roll it carefully until Danny makes a sound and clenches around him. 

“Beautiful thing,” James praises him. “Lovely thing.”

“Yours?”

“Mine,” James promises him. “Entirely.”

He keeps them at a steady slow rhythm, a push and pull, arch, tug. He soothes over the pebbled nipples until his cock presses against Danny’s prostate, and then with a grin, takes up that torment again too. The response is immediate, a sudden snap of electricity that tightens Danny’s body from toes to calves to ass to stomach and on up to his voice that he buries against James’ fingers when they splay across his lips. Kissing weakly, suckling, every moan is broken into fragments with James’ thrusts, shorter and higher, again and again.

Reaching back, Danny’s numb and fluttering fingers rest against James’ hip. The bed squeaks beneath and he seeks, between their bodies, to push his fingertips where James’ cock widens his hole. Wrinkled skin stretched smooth, the muscle quivers and when it tenses Danny moans around James’ fingers, now pressed against his tongue.

He wraps a finger around the base of James’ cock and squeezes, sucking hard.

“Incredible boy,” James praises him, the words barely louder than a sigh. “Danny, I -”

James clenches his muscles and forces them relaxed once more. Over and over as he tweaks Danny’s nipples, feels his fingers slicked by clever and quick tongue, pushes in over and over to bring delight to the young man in his arms. 

He frees his hand to wrap it around Danny’s cock, stroking smooth with the aid of spit and Danny's own expulsion. 

“Come with me,” he whispers. “Now, a mess in bed before we doze, before we wake and do this again, before -”

Danny’s laugh bubbles up from him as his climax jerks free. Cock twitching in James’ hand, he lets his fingers slip loose when James’ length swells and fills him in turn. Balls drawn snug against their bodies, they empty in waves that rock them together in an ebb and flow of breath and pulse and pressure and release. Their gasps and whispers become a chorus of low groans, spilled as hot as the slick strands of come that ribbon loose from their coiled stomachs, again and again until there’s nothing left but trembling delight and unsteady hearts.

Both are left speechless, a rarity indeed. James is the first to try to move but Danny grips his hip to hold him where he is. He tilts his head instead to kiss James clumsily over his shoulder, fond little touches like those they share when one returns from going out, when they slip to sleep, when they wake again in the morning. Though their sexual fortitude is formidable, their adoration for the other exceeds it by far.

They support and uplift. They admire and revere. When one stumbles the other is there to help them up again. Danny doesn’t work with the Society anymore. James pursues relatively safer sources of adrenaline.

Neither need to stand alone and face the world when instead they can share one of their own making.

“Fine,” Danny whispers against James’ lips. “I’ll go skiing with you.”

James sighs his pleasure and rubs his face possessively between Danny’s shoulders. 

“Thank you, darling,” he tells him, stroking cool knuckles up and down Danny's side and stomach, bringing them to his lips to suck them clean. 

“And I shall go dancing with you in Germany,” he offers in reply, making Danny laugh and wriggle in pleasure. A moment more and both laugh, snorts and soft shakes of their shoulders as they hold tight and stay as they are. Pressed close and together.

United against whatever the world throws at them next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those who have read this along the way, or those who are reading it in its completed form! We are preening-proud of this one and though crossovers are always a hard fit to find an audience for, we're delighted that you decided to join us for this unusual little venture. Thank you for your kind words and comments. It means the world to us.


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